On a hot August day in 1995, a Baltimore Sun photographer snapped this picture of three-year-old John Boias. It sparked a citywide discussion on childhood obesity, and brought Boias the kind of micro fame that haunted him as he grew up struggling with his weight.
The paper published the photo again at the end of ’95 in a “best-of” roundup, and the Good Humor man pasted it on his truck.
Then, in June of this year, the Sun published it again, in a magazine commemorating the paper’s 175th anniversary, prompting a feature story in the paper in July about Boias’s futile effort to outrun the image—and, of course, another opportunity to run the photo. Boias, now 20 and sounding like Michael Corleone, told the reporter: “Every time I think that picture is out of my life, here it comes again.
The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review.