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Cecilia Lim | all galleries >> travel >> malaysia > Left Out
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3 September 2007 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Left Out

As the children continued with their teeth-brushing lesson, I noticed a boy standing by himself, watching the other kids. He was not in uniform like the others and from his body language, it is quite apparent that he yearned to be part of the class. Sadly, nobody noticed him or invited him to join the lesson, and he remained at the fringes of the class area for the rest of the lesson.

Compositionally, I was initially quite annoyed by the distracting pole and the way the boy overlapped the kids in the background. But we had to accept our restrictions as we could only shoot from behind a wire fence that had only 3x3 inch square openings. In the end, I decided that the pole dissecting my image actually added to the feeling of segregation. Although the image still doesn't look quite right to me, I posted this because I felt it had a great story to tell.


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Guest 19-Apr-2012 08:04
Hi Cecilia, is there a way for me to contact you to get permission to use this photo as a report? Thanks so much. -Yanie-
Phil Douglis04-Jul-2008 19:12
You are right -- the pole is not a distracting element. It is part of the story here. It does indeed reinforce the feeling of being left out of the fun.