What??!!

Leafing through Los Angeles Magazine a few weeks ago, I came upon this ad.....now I know what they were going for; that's obvious.....but what comes across on the page made my stomach lurch and my breath gasp....What the hell were they thinking? Are we as a society so numb and jaded that a scene like this doesn't conjure up death and destruction at the most primal level....setting off the kind of horror that is a terrorist's wet dream?

I worked around the advertising community for years. I know an ad at this level involved many people with many decisions being gone over and over. "They" were happy with the photo....This image was signed off on, for God's sake. I understand the sweetness of the concept of the kid's exhausted after an obviously raucus birthday party, but something went awry..... Studying the composition, to me the tipping point is the child in the pink dress' posture in the foreground. It changes everything. I assume, from being on many shoots, there were probably other images with different variations, but using all those children, you don't have a lot of time for many variations of poses, even with massive photoshop intervention. But this is the frame that was chosen.

This was not the work of some fine art photographer tolling away in the darkest region of his soul.....how did this get into print to sell furniture?

Just asking and shaking my head in disbelief....but then, maybe I'm too sensitive, and a cigar is sometimes just a cigar?

What do you think of this?