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Year’s Best Photo Award


Julian2

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Photo of PAD man grabbing and dragging red-shirt woman by her hair wins Year’s Best Photo award

 

Despite its wrong caption, Thai Rath’s photo of a former PAD guard grabbing the hair of a red-shirt woman and dragging her along the road during the military crackdown in April has won the Best Photo of the Year Award from the Mass Media Photographers Association of Thailand (MPA). The MPA President explained it won because it is so vividly emotional that no description is necessary. Abhisit will preside over the ceremony on June 18.

 

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The photo of the year is an interesting photo, but definitely NOT a good photograph. It could have been taken by an amateur.

 

You neither see the faces of the women, nor the soldier, nor does it have an interesting composition. Photographer is not really part of the scene, since he is standing in the back of the main actors.

 

But it's interesting for two reason:

- The struggling couple is surrounded by media, not demonstrators or soldiers.

- Even though it's probably not staged, it looks like publicity stunt by an unknown entity, using two faceless actors.

 

I guess the jury did not understand this, but in the end they choose an image which symbolizes what's going on in LOS: a power struggle by the Thai elite which stays in the shade, while the masses and the military are moved like chess figures on a chess board. And albeit the overwhelming presence of the media, the common people, who are used as proxies in the power struggle, remain faceless.

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"an image which symbolizes what's going on in LOS: a power struggle by the Thai elite which stays in the shade, while the masses and the military are moved like chess figures on a chess board. And albeit the overwhelming presence of the media, the common people, who are used as proxies in the power struggle, remain faceless."

 

What's happening in LOS is what's happening in other parts of the developing world - namely it's a conflict between the urban, educated, and modern on one side (the yellow shirts for LOS) and the rural, illiterate, and traditional on the other side (the red shirts).

 

 

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