(photo at left, by Evaristo Sa, AFP/Getty Images. Taken 3/1/2010)
I ran across this photo in the USA Today yesterday (wouldn't this make it the USA Yesterday?). I love this photo. It says so much... with no words. It tells a compelling story. It offers great support to the written story. Your heart aches for this woman.
But... it also reminds me of the famous Dorothea Lange photo, "Migrant Mother" (top right) from 1936. Which led me to wonder whether this is an artistic masterpiece of an editorial photo, captured at just that moment of despair for this woman... or a derivative knockoff. The women even look similar and have the same pose. They both are saddened caretakers for other subjects in the photo. Do I like this photo because it says so much to me? Or do I like it because I always liked the older photo? It seems similar to the song I love TODAY because it reminds me of a song I loved yesteryear.
I guess it's a matter of taste, really. I'd have to say it's a fantastic photo. I love everything about it, really: the exhausted dog with his head on her lap; the woman's aching despair as she looks over the heaping mound of what was her life before the earthquake.
Similarly to the Lange photo of its time, this photo seems so filled with emotion that it makes one want to help... Help repair that tape deck at her feet. Give that dog a bowl of food. Give that woman something, ANYTHING, which could help her.
Any photo which can make us think of all of that has done its job, regardless of its reminders.
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