There are many historic events that shook 1968..the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Miriam Makeba married Stokely Carmichael... but ultimately I wanted to do something that was a part of me and my birth into this world.
1968 saw the intensifying of the struggle for freedom in South Africa and Nelson Mandela had served 4 years of his prison sentence. One thing which I've always remembered is my mother saying how as she lay in the nursing home when I was born, she heard Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" on the radio and she cried...she was blissfully happy. Hence the really abstract thing I've come up with: a type of diptych showing the paradox of my birth into one world...(the dress is my Christening dress) and the very different world that existed just outside in the townships (the book is a redundant Pass Book that belonged to a friend of mine).
Probably will not be appreciated by many, but it was a great exercise to try and create the image I had in my head!!
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Sorry you didnt get in the top 10. Definitely on of my all time DPC photos. My daughter is visiting J'burg next week, and have a few friends from there too. You are right. Not enough people appreciate the real beauty in this photo.
I adore the significance of this, from another country opposite of where I am from, so many others are so much alike in styles for fashions with the exceptions of some being different for the habitats cultures... Its this that can open more peace to some as they see similiarities in all human and we are all alive sharing the world.
This is a very different concept from what I usually see on DPC... And I like it! :) You've taken a completely different approach to a photograph, managed to meet the challenge description, AND produced a wonderful image. Well done!
An interesting display of Apartheid memorabilia. The song lyrics add to the feeling of sadness and loss. I sense a stong division between youth and innocence lost, and death and distruction with details that are there, yet not discernable.
I'd love to see this sharper so I can see the details. At the same time, this collection comes across as a display or mural, not a photo. 5
What a powerful picture! So beautiful and I love the framing of text, cannot help by having Louis sing along as I read it ... but behind the picture is anything but beauty :-(
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