It would not be an exaggeration to say we All know, or have at least come across, one of the most remarkable meme in the internet, or rather an aleatoric masterpiece in photography immortalized by the "Firestarter's", or "Disaster Girl's", dad, an amateur photographer Dave Roth, while testing out his new camera in Mebane, North Carolina, 2005.
While the picture easily portrays itself as sinister with the 4-year-old Zoe giving an ominous smile in front of a burning house, the story behind is quite the opposite! The wholesome birth of the beloved meme and a great photograph was set forth when Zoe with her father, Dave Roth, went together to watch the local fire department's controlled burn of a property, to be cleared by the intentionally started fire, in their neighbourhood in January, 2005. At the right time and in right place he asked her to smile for the camera, and the photograph now immortalized would few years later be sowed into the field of internet and sprout forth a great many memes and later a significant amount of money.
Two years later, on January 2nd, 2007, Dave Roth uploaded the picture, then titled "Firestarter" with a caption "Zoe didn't start the fire.", to Zooomr, a website for sharing pictures nowadays defunct, where it didn't gather much attention; viewed 3802 times and favourited by 84 people by February 18th 2010. While not attaining its famousness here, it got praised by some of the photographers he admired, like Daniel Krieger, Thomas Hawk, Jeremy Brook, and others.
It seems he knew about the successful nature of the picture as later that year, on November 29th, he submitted it to the "Emotion Capture" competition with the same name as before, but with the caption changed to "She's just an innocent bystander. Or is she?", organized by JPG Magazine and got selected for publication in the printed February/March 2008 issue along with a free subscription and hundred dollars. Though the picture spread out from this contest, it was a contact from Zooomr who let him know that it was circling on Digg, Fark, and Reddit in various captions and photoshopped versions: in a blog post from Sunday, November 16, 2008, he stated "[T]he fun part are the photoshopped revisions of the original photo, crediting Zoe with whatever disaster is pictured".
On next year's June 27th an officially licensed copy of the, by now newly named to Disaster Girl, photo from Redbubble and the incomes shared with Zoe. Would anyone have been able to fathom that twelve years later, on April 16th, 2021, the original was to be auctioned and sold for 180.00 ETH, or at the time approximately $473,000/?341,000/€400,000 and now already accrued into $628,603.20, to the highest bidder @3fmusic, thought to be Farzin Fardin Fard, chief executive of a Dubai-based music production company.
While it is still unclear who @3FMusic is, Fard, a business entity, or a group of people, Disaster Girl still joins the collection which includes well-known works such as @laina's Overly Attached Girlfriend, @kevinroose's The New York Times x NFT, @newrafael's Deep Blue, @hichkas' Jangale Asfalt, among others.
The auctioneer, Foundation, described the artwork as:
When disaster strikes...She is there!
4 year-old Zoe Roth ran to the burning house in her neighborhood on a fateful morning in January, 2005. Her Dad was a few steps behind with camera in tow, and quickly snapped a few photos of Zoe flashing a devilish grin with the inferno ablaze. One photo stood out, and was published in 2008. Discovered by internet connoisseurs, it rapidly spread to every corner of the world, becoming one of the most recognizable images of the 21st century.
2560x1920 pixels
Edition of 1
The news medias around the world have covered the happening, and personally the confirmation from both Zoe herself and her dad that their intimate experiences within meme cosmos has been positive. “People who are in memes and go viral is one thing, but just the way the internet has held on to my picture and kept it viral, kept it relevant, is so crazy to me” “I’m super grateful for the entire experience”, and that she loves seeing how creative other people are and that one shared last summer during racial justice protests was among her favorites were some of the things she said in NY Times article by Marie Fazio, April 29, 2021. Her father shared the same positive feelings on the memes made of the original photograph as well as the recognition he has gotten as an amateur photographer.
They have decided to split the nearly half a million netted from the auction, and Zoe has stated to use some of these earnings to pay off her student loans and donate to charities among other things. Roths retained the copyright and ten percent of future sales.
The sale of Disaster Girl NFT has been a great example of the potential for the amateur artists and memes place in digital art. Biggest concern of the future still remains, which digital artist @Wyrdcurt brought worth and summed up in a recent tweet after the auction, saying:
"Zoe Roth of "Disaster Girl Meme" fame sold the image as an NFT and this is all I could think about"
