I am a huge fan of The Atlantic (as I'm sure you are) and for all of the great stuff they produce, their "201X: The Year in Photographs" is always impressive. You can see part 3 of 3 here.
But what was more interesting to me were other copycat sites trying to do the same thing, and this one image I found from buzzfeed's article with the same premise is probably one of the most powerful images I've seen in my lifetime. It's number 44 at this link: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/most-powerful-images-of-2012. I've attached it to the email entitled 'monsoon wedding'.
I think that the power comes from the environment. In this photo there are three 'characters': the just-married couple kissing in the rain, the children in the street looking on and cheering, and the background setting, including weather. The bride is glowing and the groom is having probably the best kiss of his life, and below that perfectly ubiquitous umbrella you can see the train of her dress floating in probably a foot and a half of water. What I noticed next was the Pedigree sign in the background. That sign, evoking American industry, makes this photo the perfect juxtaposition against the American industrial wedding complex. In America, we air 'Bridezilla' three times a day on MTV, in Manila, they love each other so much that they get married in a monsoon. It seems narrow-minded of me to focus on this image when there are so many others in the article that are more politically pressing (two women getting married in Maryland, student riots in Chile, Syrian civilians with their families) and maybe it is because I was married this year, but the image of the Campos kissing in the monsoon just floored me. I felt as happy as that little girl in the white Knights shirt jumping and screaming for joy in the background.
Of course there is also the monumental Collected Early Poems and Plays of Robert Duncan, which I cannot wait to buy as soon as it comes in at the Riverside bookstore!
Another thing I'm excited about is Lori's MFA instructor Jill Essbaum has been winning a lot of awards lately. I'd never heard of her until she started trading emails with Lori, but I am coming to love her poems. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/jill-alexander-essbaum
No comments:
Post a Comment