A terrifying image, made more so by your close vantage point and the almost random, casual arrangement of what once were the heads of living human beings who were killed only because of who they were, not for anything they might have done. Periodically, governments do this to their own people. It is how they remain in control. It is good that photographs like this can be made to remind of us this fact. This is one of the greatest strengths of photojournalism, Ruthie -- to arouse compassionate horror within the viewer so that hopefully things like this can never happen again. But sadly, history show us otherwise.
I wonder who these people were. Which family. Who's brothers or sisters, children or mother or father or cousin or uncle. What they did .... their careers, their work, ... what their future would have been. Were they killed for wearing eyeglasses? ... maybe because they were higher level than a taxi driver peddling a bicycle taxi? Maybe because they didn't grovel correctly for the executioner, or looked up at the wrong moment?
Pictures like this never stop freaking me out Ruth! It is not that I am wet or anything, but these are (sorry..were) human beings and I immediately see faces not skulls. Maybe that makes me a sensitive type of guy, or maybe I am really wet. I admire you for taking a picture like this up close and personal, I don't know if I could. One point I would like to make about what you have done here...by being so close, you have personalised these skulls. A different view that somehow emphasised the scale of the killing fields e.g. with wide angle would have expressed something different. That is what I like most about this image, tis is not about scale of the horror, it is about how personal it is.
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