Historicist: "The city that nobody loves"
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
Each weekday morning, we pick a recent image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve!
This photo should be reprinted on the front of every newspaper in the country. There should be on 100-foot-high billboards, pamphlets, and t-shirts. It should be burned into our psyche as a galvanizing image in the fight against global warming.
Then, politicians in Ottawa, Queen's Park, and Toronto, who like to dance around Kyoto and climate change issues, will have this young girl to answer to.
Toronto photographer omiala (Angelo Alaimo) caught this iconic image on Sunday afternoon, while attending the Toronto Rally for Kyoto at Nathan Phillips Square. Clearly, we love it. The photographer himself simply describes it as "a worried look," but for us, there's something more profound in this young girl's expression -- a mix of anger and frustration, and at the same time, a defiant tiny glint of hope. The handmade signs are heartbreaking.
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Um, guys? I hate Global Warming too, and I wish all the luck to these protestors, and hope we can change things before it's too late...
But whats more likely?
-The girl is worried and angry and frustrated about Global Warming.
-The girl is tired and angry and frustrated because her mom dragged her out to portest with all these strangers on her Saturday.
Call me a cynical asshole curmudgeon, but my vote is with the latter.
I was about to say the same thing...looks to me like a girl who'd rather be playing with her friends and wants to go home. I bet she was excited and interested by the prospect of the rally initially but this is the look of a weary child. Weary from standing around all day, not from the decline of the Earth's health.
Believe me I wish the opposite was true.
I agree. No matter how worthy your cause may be in your mind, forcing your children to demonstrate in support of your cause is just wrong.
There's a difference between educating your child in an important matter, and indoctrinating your child in your beliefs.
Agreed. I'd be pretty peeved if I was taken away from Saturday morning cartoons to protest with a Queen Elizabeth II lookalike. From a photographic point of view, I think the photo would be much more striking if we could actually read the sign she's holding. Or the sign the other person is holding. There's actually nothing in the picture to give any context or to communicate why she would have the emotions you're ascribing to her. Except, I suppose, the words "litter" and "pollute" on the sign in front of her, which communicate that she is at some kind of protest about bad things. However, viewers will doubtless get the slightly disturbing feeling that she has exclamatory feelings about something that ends in OCK!
My guess is her sign says: Get me home! The Incredwables is on at 4 o'clock!
I know you can't tell from the picture but that circular red button in the middle of the girl's jacket is Ontario Young Liberal swag. I had the misfortune of standing next to the OYL clan as they drooled over a thoroughly unimpressive Maria Minna speech.
Clearly we do not love it.
i think the sun is shining in her eyes to be honest.
I'm not going to try to read anything into the girl's look, but she is not so young that all she can possibly be thinking about is running home and playing.
I can remember voluntarily colouring signs and joining campaigns for issues that mattered with my friends when we were kids. Back then it was preventing developers from building subdivisions on green space. We were natural environmentalists at that age. Everything we loved was outdoors.
aside from the liberal swag and assumptions that this girl is tired from being dragged out with her parents all day, i think there is much to gain from this piece of photography. the picture says more then a girl who is worried about global warming. it captures the soul of a child, which was confused and weary at the time of the shot. it captures the innocence behind every child of the world, and us, when we were young. i think if we all think back to when we were children, we can remember the feelings of confusion and dependence that sometimes overtook our minds. now as a piece of art, i do feel this shot will automatically relate itself to global warming and the impact it may have on our future, the children.
People don't say Liberal Swag nearly enough.