LoVe is all you need
Today, I was invited to add the crazy naked lady to the Flickr wheelchairs pool. So, I took another look at the photo, with an eye toward the old lady in the wheelchair, and figured I’d play with a crop to see if I could re-balance the scene a bit.
Uhm, there’s a naked lady involved . . . in case you’re at work . . . you should know that . . .
I centered on the “LoVe” sign and the elderly lady who looks to be snoozing in her wheelchair. Where the fervent naked lady is taking one approach, her older partner in the chair looks more “beat” (in the poetic tradition) and accepting of this wild scene.
I like the crouching young women in the corner, who are taking what looks like a more intellectual, academic approach to the whole thing . . . one might draw a line from the youthful, studious, idealistic women on the right, to the middle-aged, comically outlandish idealistic woman on the left, to the tired, good-natured, old lady dozing in the center, who I like to think retains her idealism.
Finally, you have the crowd in the background, and the guy behind the sign, right in the middle of things, looking right into the lens, reminding us that all these ideas are playing out all at once right in the middle of a public space and hell yeah–people are paying attention and drawing their own conclusions and the act of watching is participatory–the photographer (and hopefully, the viewer) is the final colorful character, whose own bearing and ideals are being watched and judged.
(Okay, yeah, I have some free time and I’m being all Liberal Arts major. Go ahead and judge me!)
This protest was in April 2002, at Dolores Park in San Francisco, with a very big march down to the Civic Center via Market Street. There were many many colorful characters, and I like to think this little crop conveys a decent overall feel for the participants pretty well.
In closing . . . hey, Love is all you need.
