photo sharing and upload picture albums photo forums search pictures popular photos photography help login
magazine | all galleries >> Behind the Scenes >> challenge_1 > guilty (Marisa Taddia)
previous | next
31-MAY-2005

guilty (Marisa Taddia)

Author Comment:


Message: In a society that is deeply based in the concept of guilt, I tried to represent how this ‘feeling’ works on the human being, who suffers the consequences of being ‘guilty’ and rejected. And show that, no matter how hard or difficult the situation could be, there’s always the possibility to find the positive and constructive energy to transform the bad into good.


Abstraction:
• By photographing a naked human being, without any external ‘layer’ and ‘shell’ like cloth or make-up, I tried to remove the outside world and show the human in its own and purest essence: the skin.
• By doing this, any human being –no matter the gender or the ‘colour’ of skin- can identify his/herself with the subject of the photograph, becoming in this way a universal image.
• By using a metal rake I tried to synthesize the concept of society, representing its cold, harsh and unmercifully hand/face.

Incongruity:
• Flesh and metal in contrast, representing a living being with a soul in opposition to a rigid and soulless entity. Warm and cold, soft and hard, flexible and rigid… pair of opposites and extreme polarities that enhances the difference between them.
• The metal hand accuses and condemns, but also maintains the defendant in its place, preventing him/her to move of there and face the accusation. So, how can the human defend him/herself? Who is the victim and who is the aggressor? Where’s the ‘fair play’ if the sentence is established beforehand?
• The victorious look of the rigid metal hand and the defeated gesture of the human body representing the result of this confrontation.
• After being condemned by the society, the human being appears rejected and discriminated of the social thing, excluded from any attempt of integration. The society turns away (the hand faces the camera and now looks like a face) and the human is left alone (of backs and in self-embrace).
• Light and darkness are both in the human being and the society. Although there’s a big difference between both, in the dark zone of the right side there’s a darkness that in a way melt both of them, making very difficult –and almost impossible- to define and discover where’s the end of one and the beginning of the other. We can consider this darkness both as an individual and collective unconscious, where human and society get confused and mixed, impossible to separate; representing the subtle and profound stages of the psyche where the social and cultural behaves and mandates works.
• On the other hand, both the rake and the shoulder have a similar triangle shape. We can think about a similar origin in both of them because the society is made by human beings; but something happened to the society in a certain point. But, what... why… when…?


Human values:
• Regarding the human being: shame, guilt, isolation, pain, sadness, abandoned, fear…
• Regarding the society: coldness, selfishness, heartless, omnipotence, discrimination, rejection, fury…
• I think that this feelings and emotions are not exclusive and can be consider in both ‘categories’: there must be a lot of individual and collective isolation, pain, fear to become heartless, coldness, omnipotent...
• But what I consider the most important human value of this photograph is the possibility of the human being of finding him/her once being condemned. No matter how isolated or discriminated can be there’s still that self-embrace (in the light side of the picture) that holds the self and keeps integrated the human in body, mind and soul. There’s always the chance to find a new society to belong or, if it doesn’t exist, to create it. There’s still hope for someone denied and neglected. In that process, and looking very deep inside, the human being can discover its own strength, importance, creativity, possibilities, gifts, self-confidence and the best of the human value: love.


other sizes: small medium large auto
comment | share
Guest 06-Jan-2006 18:26
i truely enjoy this image and your words about the meaning behind it. so wonderful.