Let me tell some true background infromation about this picture.
The picture was surely took in a public bar,as you can see several monitors and a DVD player under it.People can rent DVD and watch there.The space is crowded,for most bar owners often try to put as many seats as possible into it in order to save space,so they look like shoulder by shoulder. They are watching DVD separately,and to avoid disturbing others nearby,they often put earphone on.Same situation can be seen in internet bars.
NO one pay them,but they should pay to play.
Some of them are jobless,so they spend a lot of time there just let time pass by,some have jobs,so they go to play after work for relaxing.So,NOTHING related to "make-work". --Martin Yu from Beijing China
This is one of your most expressive images to date, Kal. It is utterly incongruous -- all of these men in this tiny space doing the same thing yet also seeming to be doing nothing at all. It is a metaphor for make-work. Somebody is paying them to sit there and look busy but somehow nobody is up to that task. It is metaphor for a country with ample resources but not enough money or brains or energy to harness them effectively. Every person is revealing in his facial expression and body language. So many of them, so little space, so little work, so little result. Yes, it is China and any other country where much of the "work" is really "make-work."
This was about the crowded space, yet the distance between them. They are one yet separate. They communicate but not with each other or us, but some other virtual existence. All the while that man at the back left realises he is the only one who understands, but there is no one to talk to. This is progress, but deprsonalisation....connecting China with world, but breaking community apart. In short progress like anywhere else in the world.
A great image Kal!!! How many man can work in such crowded place? This does not really resemble a "communications" working place... Even the men look too relaxed :))
It's a wonderful image because it really "takes us there".
Congratulations.
Kal,
This picture has immediately attracted my attention for its dynamic perspective.
There is iteration of gestures and activities and even of expressions on these people’s face. They are celebrating a common virtual ritual in a reduced space, but, at the same time, they are all isolated from each other, closed to the communication with the person just sitting near by, in a space of few centimetres, but open to a remote and global communication, as if they wanted to leave the narrow space where they are physically.
Then of course it’s also a metaphor of progressing China, with all its inner contradictions and one foot in the past and one in the future, to find a balance to stand up in the present.
Then the image is so deeply aesthetic just formally.
A great shot from all point of view.
Marisa
