At first glance, it seemed the perfect image to capture these turbulent times. A young man wearing only a pair of white y-fronts, draped after an apparent night of drunken debauchery across one of New York's best known financial landmarks - a statue of a charging bull which sits in Bowling Green park, just a stone's throw from Wall Street.
The bull sculpture, by Italian-American artist Arturo di Modica, was erected in 1989 as a tribute to the resilience of America's financial system. But the circumstances of the photo, taken last week, were as cloudy as the economy's prospects. Had the comatose bull-rider been drowning his sorrows? Or celebrating the return of an era of surging stockmarkets and six-figure bonuses?
The website Dealbreaker, which says the picture was taken by an early-morning commuter in the post-dawn gloom, wondered whether the subject was an errant Wall Street intern. But it turns out that the truth was less authentic. The person on the bull has been unmasked as Peter Killy, an actor posing for promotional shots for a forthcoming indie film, Robber Barons of Wall Street.
Killy told New York magazine that the bull statue was "very cold". And that he was "slightly disturbed" that the opportunistic photographer, not to mention a couple of police, passed by without checking whether he was dead or alive.
"If I had been an intern," he said, "I'd be wondering how long you have to stay there for somebody to actually stop and see if you are okay."
