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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Forty-Eight: Telling stories with pictures > Duck pen, near Can Tho, Vietnam, 2008
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04-JAN-2008

Duck pen, near Can Tho, Vietnam, 2008

These ducks are being raised, no doubt, to feed someone. But at this point, it is the duck that gets the meal. I layer this image, just as I would prepare chapters in a story. The first layer is the duck pen itself, filled with relatively complacent ducks, unmindful of their ultimate fate. A tree overlaps the duck pen, representing nature and growth and magically linking this layer to the last one. The second layer offers us two tubs and a bag, letting us know that these ducks are being well fed so that they will eventually make someone an appropriate feast. The last layer extends the scene as a fantasy – there is a lush landscape painted on the wall in the background, a painting that links directly to the tree that looms over the ducks in the pen. It offers an idyllic context to the image, an implied "Duck Paradise," sanitizing the inevitable ending of the story.

Leica V-Lux 1
1/400s f/5.6 at 44.9mm iso100 full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto
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Phil Douglis22-Jun-2008 18:32
Thanks, Ceci, for seeing the "plump sweetness of this scene." It is exactly that, yet it also offers an incongruous juxtaposition, comparing the doubly stated leafy paradise to the grim nature of a fenced in holding pen. Thanks, too, for noting the pair of sandals left on the step, implying the presence of those who built this pen and will eventually profit from it.
Guest 22-Jun-2008 07:13
All I can think of is bird flu, despite the plump sweetness of this scene, and the typically good natured expressions on these fowl. It's easy to keep such oblivious creatures for the dinner table (even though it appears that there's not enough water for bathing, judging from all the soiled breasts), because they are such gentle, relatively quiet, friendly birds, who require only some grain and the chance to preen and bathe and be together. I like the mural, the live tree, and especially the pair of sandals on the step, and all the shades of green, that contrast so nicely with the white quackers.
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