* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #828 / Revived #048 on 2024 02 28 *

This is at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona. The photo is not of an art installation, it's just a corridor with a glass brick floor and people walking on it.
The title refers to the sleep nightmares that all children between the ages of 3 and 6 have.

Over 6,000,000 were killed during WWII and now you call them a perpetrators.

Are you saying the actions of certain Europeans (not just Hitler and Germany) in and around WWII justify the way so many Israelis (not all) treat the Palestinians???

What one has to do with another. This memorial is in the memory of Jews killed in WWII.

Can we please not bring pointless political debates into a weekly photo thread people? You have the rest of the internet to go and argue. No one is in this thread for that.

I agree.

As much as I value and encourage civilized and rational debate about any subject (even geopolitics) and as much as I hate censorship (and I would seldom call a debate “pointless” BTW): this is just not the appropriate venue.
Thanks guys!

Since the beginning of this thread, the photography has not really involved any images of strong emotional content.

It is inevitable that good photography will include a certain percent of emotional imagery. It is also inevitable that there will be verbal response to such photographic images.

So, we've apparently crossed a threshold now with such a contribution. And it happens to be of one of the strongest emotional issues in all of human history.

I believe it is at the least, naive, to expect that there will be only simple, polite, non-confrontational responses to all images here. Photography can be an intense art form. As can any artistic expression of human experience. I think it is unrealistic to expect and enforce that only genteel, non-emotional, "white bread" reactions to the posts of some contributors are acceptable here.

I think the moderation of this thread has to be in general conformity with the philosophy of the Forum in general, which is quite a bit more accepting of varied views of subjects. I think we can survive controversy.

Thoughtfully,

Rich

I agree with Opencube and RoelHendrickx.
I would like this forum to be limited to photographic C&C.

"Jaw" This turned out way nicer than it had any right to be. Shame about that placement.

A good bit of detective work Minniev. The patterns and colours of the image appealed to me but I couldn't interpret them in any way at all. Now I know what it is, I like it a lot and I also appreciate the formatting used. Anything that gets me to look at something from a different angle is a pleasure.
I'm alarmed at the idea that I should have grown out of nightmares over seventy years ago. This needs urgent discussion with my psychologists, psychiatrists, and my assorted religious advisors. I won't sleep tonight worrying about it.

Tricky. I agree with Rich but I think the discussion here went considerably further than the image itself. I'd have no objection though to a current image from a conflict that challenged our perspectives. The discussion ought to be limited to the interpretation of the image itself, whatever it shows. Even as I write this I can imagine the difficulties in intepreting and applying what I have just written.
Should anyone be interested in pursuing this in relation to the current war situation, that's OK with me but let's do it via the personal communication channel.

This is difficult to discuss. Should we respond to the photographs or the work of art or both? How far do we go in sharing personal responses that might be engendered?
As photos, they are simple but effective. They effectively record the sculpture and its setting. They are not trying to make a statement of their own, they simply put it before us. The first is surprising. We see the sculpture in its broader setting where its colour and form merges it into the tropical palms. The second details the sculpture itself and adds the wall of names. The angle accentuates the reaching for the sky of the hand and the suffering of the people. It's good photography that conveys the sculpture and its impact.
As far as the sculpture itself goes, I prefer the simpler statements on the same theme that PeteS has shared here from Berlin.
It is impossible though to consider such a subject in isolation from current events. Ref my response to the broader discussion raised by this image on what we can/should discuss here.

Lots of eye motifs here all brought together by the fish eye lens. The "eye in the sky", the circular shapes. the telescope, the girl's eyes, the blue base. A nod to the exposure as well. It takes care to get a clear sky like that with good exposure of the foreground. The colour balance across the whole image is delicately handled. There's a muted edge to everything with repeated dusky tones. Those old Olys had beautiful colour.
A note on child photography. Taken in 2013. I'd be wary taking that photo today. It's asking for a confrontation. Kids are such wonderful subjects on their own and also because of what they add to locations. The photo I showed last week with the girl dancing was carefully Okd with the parents before and after I fired. I was particularly careful because previously I had noted that they had noted me with the camera.

Whereas I'm enjoying, with relief, the last embers of a hot summer.In addition to minniev's thoughts.
Viewing it large brings out the edges of the frost fingers and the screen and I feel that the edges are critical here. I really like some of the horizontals here that provide solidity that offsets the delicate edges - the base of frost, the dark area topped with the light. The multi angles of the frost lines are counterpointed by the regularity of the mesh. The balance of the taller frost lines on the left with the dark area intruding up on the right is notable.
I can't see what the camera settings were but I think a little more DoF would have helped bring out more of the sharp frost edges.
Lots of stars for this shot.

The bigger I viewed this, the better it got. The rain became more apparent with each enlargement. The screen of vertical lines repeats the verticals of the grasses. Your shutter speed and exposure settings get it just right. The horizontal slash of the lake breaks up the greens while giving the grass edges a background that picks them out. It also creates a gently inverted V that connects the background central dark trees to the mid ground and helps unify the picture.
A very satisfying image.

Unusually, I don't see this the same minniev although I agree that it is a wonderful image. At first I smile at the promenade, then it becomes sinister. Do we really want this development? I note the cable truck. The roll out is underway.
Lots of horizontal lines link the ducks, the sign and the landscape. Their futures are locked together.

Good question Pete. I thought much the same and came to similar conclusions. I still don't like the size of the dark blob at the top and I think it ditracs a bit too much. Even so, I think the image gets away with it because the background is very symmetrical. Vertical Symmetry is provided by the large white patch on which the subject stands and so we don't mind the shape at the top too much.

After that, I got interested in the film. I used to use HP4 a lot and, if I remember correctly, I developed it in Microphen. I would have shot and developed using this combination way more than any other film I ever used. Coincidentally, I have just been working on an old B&W HP4 photo of mine I took over 55 years ago. I might post it here in a few weeks.
Then I became even more curious. It's a 35mm image, not a 2 1/4 square. I suspect that this is either a recent photo of an old photo or it is quite a recent photo. C'mon Open Cube, tell us and then I'll tell y'all why I think this.

Edit edit etc because I think minniev has done quite a lot of PP here. And it has been worth it. I'm guessing. minniev, did those foreground leaves get some extra attention? Did you have Escher's Three Worlds in mind? If not, check it
s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/ea/2e/de/ea2ede67edc615e6470a046cb0ee25a3.jpg

It is quite magnificent. Framing, exposure, control of dof, toning. It would be criminal not to do this as a large print.