Glasnostby
LevTComment by e301: from the
Critique Club
It's refreshing to read some suitable details written for a shot, rather than the everlasting lists of EXIF data, or the simple and dismissive 'N/A' - especially when asking for a CC piece on a photo. Thankyou for that, and thankyou for some way in to this image.
The difficulty, of course, is that in an Anglophone website, and a predominantly US-populated community, not only the Russian but even more the Cyrillic script is, I think, liable to alienate many voters. People just aren't going to give an image the time required to make a decent assessment. But you know this - your collection of ribbons tells me you know how to score here when you want to.
More than simply for the Russians, the eastern europeans, the primary moments of the 80's were about dissent against the autocratic regimes - not only the entire process of the 'velvet' revolutions, but also one recalls Tianenmen Square - arguably, photographically, the difining image of the period is of the young student stopping the tanks in the square.
This approach - I don't know: it has a certain obviousness, a certain blatant set-up quality that seems at odds to me with your message, with the intent of the image. I wonder if, perhaps, you've actually brought a rather 'western' cleanliness of image, of organisation of elements, to something that purports to illustrate a different world. The perfectness of the colour, the smoothness of light, the level of detail makes it absolutely clear that this is not only utterly 'posed', but also utterly digital and modern - modern in the sense of 'of the early years of the 21st century, rather than of a time of hiddenness, censorship and the years immediately before the real strike of the digital revolution - audio, in the form of the CD, had struck for sure (I was a student and yet had a CD player), but the internet, the ubiquity of the PC, and digital imaging were only on the horizon. For the purposes of this illustration, would you not want a greater feeling of desertion, of the forgotten: dust and cobwebs and a sense of a room forever locked?
Your choices are, of course, perfectly valid. The image was never going to resonate with the voters here in general: many are too young, few would give the image the time it deserves, and you only need glance at the winning images in this challenge to realise that what any period of history really means to people is the fashions of the time. Supposedly the ephemera - but if we ever needed a reminder of that ephemera you could take this challenge as an example. It's an indictment, but it's probably futile to resist - and the rise of this medium, the fact that anyone can publish whatever hits their mark, will lend it strength. Im' glad to see, however, that there are one or two people who will still resist that flow of nonsense. Thanks for a thought-provoking image.
ed
Photographer found comment helpful.
