60 Years Later, Still So Much Hateby
levyj413Comment by purpleflutterby13: Very good concept.
As for the emotional reaction - I'm afraid I'm either too young or too ignorant (or both). I spent about a minute staring at the photo not understanding what the shiny star had to do with the title. Then I read your description. Now that it's sinking in, I'm starting to get there.
The concept works very well. The processing, the crop and the relatively simple colours and shapes all work well together to illustrate dehumanisation, which I guess would be the necessary starting point of all hate crimes ever committed.
With this kind of simple, iconic imagery, it's necessary for it to be very recognisable in order to get the emotional reaction. Somehow, thinking about it at length before you get it takes away from it, because it's targeted to have immediate impact. So I'm guessing it would hit some people, but not others.
Another element of that would be how strongly the viewer agrees with the message. Personally I'd be more hit, for example, by an image about violence against women, or homophobia, or Amnesty style human rights stuff. I guess it's just not in my head that anti-semitism is a major problem at the moment, or not any more so than other hate crimes. But then again, I'm not Jewish.
Anyway, so I think the picture is well executed, but that it would only have a strong emotional impact on a select audience. However, it's all good as long as you captured the message you wanted to capture.