Contemplating the impact photography has had on the depictions of reality that we encounter on a daily basis is heart stopping. Today we are struck with harsh picture perfect realities conveying, perhaps, a slightly twisted truth. In the past when painters were left to interpret realities and spread ideas, or news, it was easy to romanticize tragedy. In the above painting, Vasily Vereshchagin’s The Road of the War Prisoners, the first thing I saw was an enchanting snow scape, then the birds, and then the bodies. In the piece Vereshchagin reflects on horrors of the Ruso-Turkish War.
J.L. Gazabat