Iran Neda and the Image


I have been obsessively following the events in Iran. a few days ago i was forwarded many personal videos of students being beaten and killed. One of course was of a rather dashing girl, Neda, who was shot in the heart, and died on the street. After watching it three times, I found myself tearing a bit. There is something so impersonal about a video, yet at the same time if you allow yourself to follow, it is extremely intimate. To watch a death of anyone is difficult, yet when it is a young girl, just the wales of the people around her was enough. Now she is being labeled as a image or logo of a uprising. The media loves to pick up a story run it through, and then simply move to something else. While I am not exactly suggesting that this should be prolonged I wonder will people actually remember this girl and what she represents. I started on some new works, taking specific moments from footage and painting from it. While painting her in particular, I find myself trying to hold on to a specific moment, and in that I know that this person, who I never met, and have little idea as to what kind of human she was including her interpersonal issues, will have some meaning in my short time on this planet. I do hope that as the twittering, and facebooking move on to more mundane issues, that some people will find room to remember at the very least what living in a more free society, and choice are really about.

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