Role Model, Lhasa, Tibet, 2004 by Phil Douglis

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27-JUN-2004

Role Model, Lhasa, Tibet, 2004

Watching his mother quickly pack up a bag of Yak meat, this butcher's son is already learning his future trade. I used 1/40th of second to blur the hand and meat, and bring this image to life.

Canon PowerShot G5
1/40s f/2.2 at 11.2mm full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto

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Phil Douglis		01-Jan-2005 22:42
Good to see you pick up on the fact that the kid look at us, while the mother looks at her work. What happens here is that the viewer and the kid create a bond that leaves the mother as the odd person out. We share a secret together. The mother is being photographed without realizing it. But we know, and so does that child. His little smile is quite charming, too. Imagine, smiling while surrounded with slabs of dead Yak hanging all around you. It's the life of a butcher-to-be.

Anna Yu		01-Jan-2005 15:05
1/40 sec is just right to blur the hand but not the faces. I particularly like the little boy looking straight into the camera, even though I usually don't try for that. The meat makes a natural frame.

Phil Douglis		16-Jul-2004 18:46
Once again, you manage to look at one of my images through a different glass. I had not thought about the brutality implied here by the hanging meat, or the differences symbolized by various wrapping systems, but I'll grant you the license to do so, with great pleasure. I was too busy relating the child to the world of his mother to even see these things -- until now.

Tim May		16-Jul-2004 18:07
The transition across time is what I see in this image. In the first place it is as you saw it with mother and child, but I also see it in the fact of the woman being almost brutally surrounded by the meat she sells for consumption in an old world historic scene and not neatly wrapped in see through containers like out supermarkets while at the same time it is being packed in the ubiquitous modern invention the plastic bag.

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