first post

peterwebb webb

trying to make a webb of connections
ha ha
trying to make criticism.
I was really struck by comparing these two images.

The first one was on the front of nyt.com.
The second one I found when I thought the first one kind of looked like Freddy Mercury.
They're both holding the gun or microphone in sort of the same position.
Their jackets are billowing up.
Also they're kind of color inverses of each other, black suit/ white exterior, white clothes/ black exterior. The notable difference is the body and the paintings.

Also, the expressions: obviously the as-yet-unnamed gunman in the first is facing his imminent death, making a political statement about Russia and Syria. It's an assassination, an act of terrorism.
He's also doing this in front of a bunch of cameras; thus the high-quality photo, a photo shoot photo.

The first image is striking and composed in a way that sends a direct message. Even without context it sends a narrative.

I'm sure already there are /pol posts about this gunman. In the process of image making, some popular images gain life as reaction images, get text added to them, are used to express. This image has the unmistakable verve that belongs to these category of images, such as the one of Freddy Mercury making the above pose, which has been redrawn and captioned on reddit and other places on the internet, to express victory.

I think the first image as well is an expression of victory, a terrible one. By the very clarity of the image, the composition of it, and the focus, the image represents the terrible victory of the gunman who sought to create an impression.

~

Devotional violence; using violence as an image-making, impression-sharing tool, as a way for people or institutions to threaten. Dexter Filkins talks jokingly that terrorists get off on their devotional pre-suicide bombing images. Gandhi uses nonviolence and the British press to win independence from India; I think there's a lazenby quote about flipping the bugs on their backs or whatever.

Lunch counter protests where black folks sit down at the counters and don't move and generate images of white people abusing them at the counters. The use of images, at least, to gain notoriety, and the subjects of the images themselves are affected. That Russian Ambassador is dead; the gunman is dead; people are traumatized. & this all in response to genocide.

So you take the opportunity to have sympathy for one side or none or rightfully evince repulsion, but the strength of the image remains; that's what incredible about it, is that, abject as it is, it remains composed, it remains undeniably strong. This is my analysis of that image, it's powerful, this the collaboration between gunman and photographer.

It feels like a pathway into fascism. Sure, the attraction of that power. The strong iconography, glorification of violence. Recognizability.
I think we're able to compete on the same scale, generate our own images for anti-fa. Take out the central figure, take out the violence. Still make it essential. Sure, Freddy Mercury.