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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Sixteen: Story-telling street photography > Life and Death, Salavan Province, Laos, 2005
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Life and Death, Salavan Province, Laos, 2005

These stupas, or tombs, of Buddhist villagers, line two sides of the community square. For generations, village children have use the tombs of their ancestors as a colorful playground. Tombs do not usually line public streets or define public recreational areas. Yet here, in a small Laotian village, they do both. To make this incongruity come to life, I focused on the tombs, and waited until a child, who was chasing another, ran through them. Shooting at 1/160th of a second was enough to blur both his hands and feet, intensifying his energy and pleasure, and adding still another layer of incongruity to the first. This child, running through life, pays no heed whatsoever to his own mortality. And that’s the way it should be.


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Phil Douglis27-Mar-2005 21:11
Thanks, Denise, for stopping at this image. You are right. Running through the dead is not exactly the stuff of pleasure. Yet death is always with us. In fact, we begin to die the day we are born. I don't think this boy knows what fear is. For him, death is an abstraction. The tombs are places to play hide and seek among. Death is very much a part of his life. I am glad you love this shot as much as I do.
Denise Dee23-Mar-2005 12:35
i love this shot, though it brought up some sense of fear in me, not joy. all the more interesting since the colors are so gorgeous, and i was not 'thinking' fear. thanks, denise
Phil Douglis04-Mar-2005 03:33
Another relevant observation, Lara. While I stressed the role of blur and the colorful tombs here, this image ultimately works because of the incongruity of the very live child uninhibitedly playing, without concern about either ghosts or decorum, among the graves of his ancestors.
Lara S03-Mar-2005 17:03
The blur of his hands and feet also add life to this little boy, not that we are not aware of it, but he is alive in his movement amidst all these tombs, although colorful but dead - considering what they represent.
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