I’ve had a bit of a DS106 lull for the last couple of weeks. I had a bit of a schedule shake up with my partner being injured, but she is on the mend now and I am getting myself back on track. I struggle getting into routines, which I suspect is a common thing really. One day at a time I return to the productive day activities as opposed to staring blankly at Facebook.
As luck would have it I noticed a visual assignment done on the blog Amateur Hour here. I am still avoiding the video and animated gif assignments. I’m believing that it’s going to take me a long time to get one done and that I’ll lose interest. It is a big fat don’t know really, I could really love it so maybe I’ll try next time.
This assignment is called Splash the color it is a two star assignment inspired by the girl in the red dress in the film Schindler’s List. In the film she is the instrument of conscience or awakening for Schindler. He identifies with her as she moves alone through the jewish ghetto as people are being murdered around her and awakens to the inhumanity and atrocities happening around her. She transforms him from a detached observer into a human witnessing the suffering of other humans that cannot be denied. He looses sight of her as she hides in a building but she returns later on in the story but this time she is dead.
The page linked to the story of the girl here believes that the story is based upon a true story told at the trial of Adolf Eichmann told by Gavriel Bach (Assistant Prosecutor at the time). Bach questioned Dr Martin Foldi who described his experience of the selection process Auschwitz. Incredibly the session tapes for this trial are available on youtube which I think is quite amazing. I decided to have a look at session 1.
It is unsettling to watching someone who has been responsible for the murder of millions of people. What unsettles me most is that he just looks like an ordinary man. In fact he is an ordinary man, one who committed horrendous crimes. He looks on from inside his glass box at the court accusing him of crimes against humanity with quiet detachment. Bach, 50 years on reflects on his experience of the trial in which he also mentions the story of the girl in the red coat.
Wikipedia also mentions unintended similarities to the story of the girl in the red coat in the movie, to that of Roma Ligocka, a survivor who in 1940 was taken to the Krakow Ghetto with her mother. She wrote the novel The girl in the Red Coat.
With that story in mind I found it quite difficult to find an image that I thought would be a modern equivalent of this. Finally I settled on an image I took during Chinese New Year in 2008 It’s an image of a young boy poking himself through the barriers along Charing Cross Rd in London trying to see the parade coming towards him. Although this image is taken during a celebration the metal barriers the boy pokes himself through gives the feeling of containment, of ordinary people being organized and ‘controlled’ by authorities. the boy is the only face in focus and his slightly pensive expression I think adds to the atmosphere.
I used photoshop to create this image turning the original photo black and white then with a layer mask painted the colour back in to the boy and his dragon. As a half chinese person who grew up listening to the adults around me talk about the horrors the Chinese suffered at the hands of the Japanese there is for me a more personal connection with this story of the girl in the red dress and this image. I don’t doubt that my reason for finally choosing it is my childhood memories of being told about the millions of chinese who were murdered. As a mixed race child I can also remember asking what would happen if it happened again and being told that I would probably end up in a camp as I was not ‘pure’. So I suppose for me there is something of that memory in this image too.
Splash the color orignal image for DS106 visual assignment
© 2013 Oskar Marchock All rights reserved.
Splash the color visual Assignment for DS106 Black and white conversion
© 2013 Oskar Marchock All rights reserved.
Splash the color final image for DS106 Visual Assignment
© 2013 Oskar Marchock All rights reserved.
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