When the Vancouver Canucks lost the NHL Stanley Cup, the team’s city burst into chaos. Cars were flipped over and burned, shops were looted and riot police shuffled through the streets with clubs. And Scott Jones and Alex Thomas were at the center of it all.
The couple has recently been revealed as the pair at the center of a now-iconic photograph showing them lying in the middle of the street, holding each other amidst a marching battalion of police officers.
For days speculation ran rampant about who the two were, and what the story behind their photo could be. Were they pausing to kiss in the middle of all the violence, or was she injured? Now the two lovers, who have since become front and center in one of the most popular images of the year, has been revealed.
Jones, an Australian, and Thomas, a Canadian student, were in town to witness the festivities when it literally fell on top of them. The two were actually knocked down by riot police, and in the photo Jones can be seen trying to comfort Thomas. “I was just trying to calm her down,” Jones told Today hosts Matt Lauer and Ann Curry on Monday, describing a scene full of angry fans and wary cops. “It was pretty scary for her, and it seemed like the best thing to do.”
The photographer, photojournalist Rich Lam, was among those being pushed back by the riot police when, all of a sudden, he noticed Jones and Thomas alone behind the front lines.
“I looked back and saw two people on the street, ” Lam told PopPhoto.com. “My first instinct was that she was run over by the riot squad and that she was hurt. It made a nice frame because of the juxtaposition. You know, there’s this huge crowd on the street and in a flash of 20 seconds, it’s bare. That’s what they do. If you can’t run, you get knocked down and then they come back and clean things up. And here are two people in the middle of the street waiting to get cleaned up. I framed it with one of the officers to really emphasize the juxtaposition.”
Lam’s photograph is the result of his determination to be in the right place at the right time. And now Thomas and Jones (and the rest of us) have an image to remind everyone of the crazy beauty of love in the middle of chaos.