(Insert very loud audio interpretation of Der Schrei der Natur here) I suppose I would be making Siberia a favorite stop for myself. If anything, this is exactly why that which is vanishing should be photographed all the more frequently.
A crying shame! "Soylent Green is people!" How many distopias are urban or suburban? "In the desert you can remember your name, 'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain."
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
-- George Orwell
Time for a Mad Magazine moment. In one of the issues, America the Beautiful was illustrated using contemporary photographs. Such as, "And crown thy good with brotherhood," with images of Detroit riots. There have been plenty of photo exposés of Detroit's decay. One might be led to imagine that it has become a completely rotted corpse of a city, and there is no hope but the bulldozer. How much sense of that does the viewer need to make?
Another thing that pops into my mind is the Shoe Event Horizon, from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (link) Where does a person focus their attention when depressed? What does a person do to try and cheer themselves up?
The photograph frames a moment of time for consideration. It is mute. Upon a slab of wall, it is a window to another place. What shall we put into that window? Is it something that focuses attention "up," or "down?"
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