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Sunday, May 02, 2010

Photo mosaic

Update on Photo Mosaic

So far they show only a miniscule portion of the pictures sent in on the NYT Lens blog, but they promise more will come.
I think it's a really neat project, I'm glad I participated.   They say, "So far, that portrait seems to be one of surprising tranquillity. No one has to tell readers of The Times, or just about anyone else, how upended and violent the world seems to be at the moment. But our respondents tended to show moments of repose, rather than anxiety; of warmth, rather than heat." 
I think my picture fit in with that, it's a happy moment.  

 But I, like others in the comments, objected to this portion of the post:

" It may not constitute a “realistic” view of the human condition, but it does offer something of a balance to the images of suffering and destruction that are more often a staple of the Lens blog.
Another impulse discernible among the early submissions was domesticity. Rather than looking for broadly symbolic visual emblems, readers concentrated on showing their worlds (and maybe a few more cats, dogs, tulips and coffee cups than we hoped to see, if truth be told)."

I think the media distorts our views of what life is really like. Yes there is a lot of violence out there, but maybe there really are more happy moments, more tranquility than we've come to believe.  Maybe the reason there were more moments of domesticity was because there ARE more moments of domesticity in life.  In my humble opinion, it is more interesting to show your own world, exactly what you were doing then, than to photography something abstract or beautiful that has nothing to do with you.  Maybe our worlds ARE broadly symbolic afterall.
I thought it was rather nice that there were so many similar photos.  Kinda comforting. We're more alike than we are different, no matter where in the world we come from.    
I'm looking forward to seeing all the submissions.  It should make for an fascinating picture of our world. 

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