What??!!

Leafing through Los Angeles Magazine a few weeks ago, I came upon this ad.....now I know what they were going for; that's obvious.....but what comes across on the page made my stomach lurch and my breath gasp....What the hell were they thinking? Are we as a society so numb and jaded that a scene like this doesn't conjure up death and destruction at the most primal level....setting off the kind of horror that is a terrorist's most glorious dream?

I worked around the advertising community for years. I know an ad at this level involved many people with many decisions being gone over and over. "They" were happy with the photo....This image was signed off on, for God's sake. I understand the sweetness of the concept of the kid's exhausted after an obviously raucus birthday party, but something went awry..... Studying the composition, to me the tipping point is the child in the pink dress' posture in the foreground. It changes everything. I assume, from being on many shoots, there were probably other images with different variations, but using all those children, you don't have a lot of time for many variations of poses, even with massive photoshop intervention. But this is the frame that was chosen.

This was not the work of some fine art photographer tolling away in the darkest region of his soul.....how did this get into print to sell furniture?

Just asking and shaking my head in disbelief....but then, maybe I'm too sensitive, and a cigar is sometimes just a cigar?

What do you think of this?

Night Again

There's a writer, Michael Ventura, who had a column entitled "Letters at 3am." published in the LA Weekly that I followed for the many years I lived in the city of angels. I mention it because he crossed my mind very early this morning after tossing in bed riding tears into the depths of uncomfortable emotions....not sure quite what set it off...well yes I do, but am not goin' public. Just to say there I was, spinning out. Then, as the ride began to subside somewhere around 2am or so, I flashed on Ventura.... how his creative writing often arose from or at least spoke of deep uncomfortable places, often arriving poetically at the epiphany of understanding or awareness.

Feeling exhausted, oddly energized but wordless in the darkness, I looked again toward the wall of windows that I suddenly realized had provided a visual landing strip for my mind each time it took off like a leaf in the wind of autumn. I recognized the shadows on the shades were visual mantras. They pulled me to them, alternately soothing my agitation and urging me on to allow the exploration into this chapter of darkness.... to proceed into the eye of the hurricane, so to speak.

Feeling gratitude toward the beauty of the shadows on these screens, I set up my tripod and camera to pay homage to what I recognized to be a source for meditation visualization.

Om Shanti - Peace