What is more absurd than an oil company sponsoring a wildlife photography contest?
Possibly someone destroying wildlife photography in order to protest an oil company sponsoring a wildlife photography contest.
Protestors from the "Camp For Climate Action" smeared a substance resembling oil onto photographs displayed at London's Natural History Museum. The photos were finalists in the Wildlife Photographer Of The Year Competition, which was sponsored by multinational petrochemical company, Shell.
So that's sort of like beating up children in order to draw attention to the issue of child abuse. Or invading a sovereign nation in order to show how wrong it is to invade a sovereign nation. Or … we know you can come up with your own example.
Camp for Climate Action member, Dan Baker, said "This is not an attack on the work of the photographers" - which is a weird thing to say, because, well, they attacked the work of the photographers.
But there have been other - less dimwitted - protests against the Natural History Museum's partnership with Shell. Websites like the 'Tragic History Museum' have been created for the sole purpose of denouncing Shell in general, and the photo competition in particular.
The Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition has been running since 1964. This year's other corporate sponsor is Microsoft.
