i'm a dilettante critiquer, at least within the auspices of the 'club', but every now and then a shot comes along that one really feels one has something to say about.
I finshed college right in the midst of the Velvet Revolution; I, and many friends, had dallied with the writings of Marx, though not particularly of his immediate successors, other than in the literary field - Althusser, Lucacks, and their ilk. We resented, as we still do, the knee-jerk reaction of the imperialist west for anything that smacked of socialist, let alone communist. We resented, also, the way that dream was sold down the river by the Warsaw Pact states, and how strongly that played into the hands of the west, with perhaps, the inevitable results we now see in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, in the rise of the gangster states of middle Asia.
Much of that process, a process that has left large swathes of my generation, and, I fervently hope, those generations that follow, passionately wary of the mis-use of symbolism, aware of the easy manipulation all politicians exert on the media, on our opinions simply through the presentation of images, can be represented in this shot. lookat the newspapers - look at the images of every politician you see, every 'world leader', every model, every rock star. You know, asa a photographer, how easy it is to catch someone mid-expression, and present the most mild mannered, most gentle human being as a foaming-at-the-mouth rabid monster - or the converse - to present the most rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth monster as a mild mannered, put-upon potential savious of our nations, of our world.
These symbols, presented here in a honest, gentle, unfussy, not over-processed manner, are in one sense almost invisible. To most of us, at least those with memories pre-1989, this provokes an automatic reaction - be it of fear, of loathing, of dreams soold-out, whatever. Yet the hammer and sickle were chosen as the basic symbols of the working men - the industrial and the agricultural, the roots of our covilisation, and as a recognition of the fact thhat the foundation of all out modern world is built on the labour of those hands. Without them, nothing.
And, as your image suggests, along with the great political movement that was so betrayed and yet should have so honoured them, those endeavours are now forgotten - betrayed?
It stands out as a thumbnail - when it came up i remembered noticing it - but somehow it doesn't, not at least to the same extent, as full size. I think that may be a light thing - at that smaller size, the subject is plain and clear, and there's a strong sense of texture in the background - at full size, that texture is resolved into a heavy aptttern of blacks greys and whites but in the large elements of the stone, rather than the fine detail that reads as texture. There's a lot of good stuff here - i really like the faded and broken red on the hammer and sickle - and the tonality is strong, but I think perhaps a less general light would help the image - just allow some shadow to help the emblem stand out from it's background some. Strong work, with that reservation.
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