As time passes, I feel more and more disillusioned by human beings. Of course, I can't deny the fact that, as a whole, Humanity achieved impressive things, but as sub-groups or even individuals, results are frankly pathetic. I remember that, as a kid, I was looking at adults with much respect, as models, as goals: now that I am one of them, I see the truth, and I am ashamed.
The key word here is intolerance. It's simply everywhere, everyday. I don't think I need to be specific, but I can point out a few obvious examples: money, religion, sex orientation, skin color, nationality, education level, artistic tastes, etc. Everything is an excuse to start some kind of war, of crusade, against. Always against. Crush the rest to prove your value. Pathetic.
When it comes to those"end of world" discussions, I thought a bit about the subject, and failed to see much reason to actually regret human beings disappearance, besides the usual egocentric thoughts. I don't see how our presence is useful to anything, except to ourselves. So I simply imagined how I would feel the last day, and tried to depict it metaphorically: cold, dry, hopeless, defenseless, scared to the bone, still breathing thanks to the survival instinct, which would be obviously useless in such case.
The image is by no mean a realistic situation: reality is not my point, generally speaking. I don't care about it when I create my pictures, I am much more driven by emotions, impressions, feelings. A vision of the mind, not of the eye. I'm sure you can understand my point of view, even if you disagree with it. Some technical considerations:
- Everything was shot in my home studio, using the very same lighting setup to keep it consistent. This means I had to cover the floor with ashes (coming from my barbecue and chimney cleanings)
- I used 4 different photos of the two subjects holding themselves: my wife and I were posing, and it is always tricky to do it correctly without anyone to guide you. In fact, no photo was satisfactory, so I selected one for the general position, one for the heads position, one for the left arms position, and finally one for the legs.
- The smoke was shot there too, using a smoke machine.
- The hand and face in the ashes were also shot on the place.
- The ghostly faces in the smoke are mine (deformed of course, I don't look that bad).
Hope some will like it!
`ChewedKandi has certainly gone out of her way to keep the vector community on the right path. Always making sure that her talents are infinitely scalable, Sharon has put her bezier curves to excellent use, and firmly anchored herself as an inspirational leader. We're absolutely delighted to bestow the Deviousness Award for June 2013 to `ChewedKandi. Congratulations, Sharon! Read More
Sta.sh
I know how you feel about human beings. I feel like that sometimes too. Much of what goes on in the world seems completely insane; overpopulation, gradual destruction of the natural world, rampant consumerism. For Christmas day here in the UK we had a Catholic bishop speaking out AGAINST gay marriage. I couldn't believe it - what a lovely message for Xmas day! Made me quite angry.
But I don't think it's good to dwell on such things or to feel too hopeless about it since that's only a partial view and human beings can be quite the opposite too, full of compassion for others. 10 years ago here the UK an estimated 1-2 million people took to the streets to protest against the war in Iraq.
Much of what we do is driven by our genes but those evolved from a completely different world so we can't expect them to be so perfectly suited for this world.
As for our usefulness it's amazing how life has expanded all over the world on land and in the sea, almost everywhere. But humans have taken the first steps to go beyond the earth - the only species to visit another world. I think our long term role will be to help spread life beyond the confines of this one lonely little planet.