Fri 22 Sep 2006
Yesterday, we’ve been to the exhibition 2005 World Press Photo in Berlin. Amazing pictures, very moving — sometimes you rather want to look away, sometimes you seem petrified by the eyes of a portrait staring at you…
Surprisingly, I and also a friend of mine were most deeply touched by photos of the bereaved of U.S. soldiers who had died in Iraq. There were many other pictures showing more cruel scenes, actually a lot of blood and tortured bodies, or ‘third world’ victims of earthquakes, wars, and hunger — I was wondering, whether even a press photo doesn’t have to show ‘it all’ to be most effective, or if we Europeans are just emotionally closer to the U.S. than to African or Asian countries.
A postcript to the exhibition: It was shown in a shopping mall at Potsdamer Platz — weird , but also a good place to reach as many people as possible. These pictures really made you stop for a minute, watch them, and made you feel bad about going shopping… well, if that’s not something!