Anguish and Poverty

I’ve decided to post this image in color. At first I thought it would be more powerful in black and white, but the truth is I lost the meaning once the colors were taken away. I initially saw this young girl sitting alone in front of her mother’s store. As I looked more closely, I saw that she was surrounded by the masks and artifacts that I typically find beautiful. For a few moments they lost their beauty entirely.

Something about the scene altered after I removed what I know of the masks and sculptures. They took on an almost wicked appearance and sinister grins. It’s difficult to see the detail at this resolution, but the masks in the upper right and left corners were almost ghostly. The masks above her head appear to be overlooking her anguish with satisfaction.

I know I’m reading into this, but for a few minutes I thought of my own childhood – how fortunate I was growing up in a wonderful home, never worrying about where my next meal would come from, always ensconced by the warmth of prosperity and able to enjoy my youth, by simply being a child. Perhaps my lens caught her at a particularly bad time, and hopefully she lives carefree despite the environment around her. I titled the other photo as “heartbreaking” because that’s exactly how this affected me.

There’s no point in me talking about it any further, as I sit in front of my shiny laptop on wireless internet, listening to music on my mp3 player, while discussing a photo I took with a $1500 camera. I’ll never know what it’s like. I’ll never understand how she must feel, and no matter how hard I try, I’ll never have the answers of how to help correct the unbalance that is so pervasive throughout every nation in this world.