A Face Tells a Story

http://cnnphotos.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/19/deadly-violence-grips-honduras/

I thought this was a very interesting image because it seems to tell a lot about the person pictured without using any words. The picture features just the face of a Holocaust survivor, it is part of a series of pictures of many survivors and it said that they did not know they were being photographed. This means the picture is very truthful and candid, since the man in the picture did not know he was being photographed. The lighting in the photograph is very interesting, because everything is extremely black except for the man’s face, which is the only thing that is illuminated. This seems to imply that the rest of the body is unimportant at this time, all that seems to matter is this man’s experiences and the story he has to tell, which comes from his mind. His expression is very telling; his eyes are downcast and full of emotion. This picture really caught my eye because you can see so much life in this man’s face, not all good things either. You can see struggle, helplessness, hopelessness, and defeat. It is amazing these things can be inferred and picked up on just by looking at the expression and mainly the eyes of the man. It is easy to see emotion in people’s eyes. It is usually always apparent if a person has pain in their eyes, you can tell they have seen a lot, lived a lot, maybe more than they ever thought they would or wanted to. This is maybe another reason why only the face is shown, to accentuate the eyes and the extreme message behind them. You wonder at the horrors and heartlessness this man must have seen for his eyes to look like this. It makes you hope that you will never have that much pain in your eyes, because it seems like it would be too much to bear. The monstrosities of the Holocaust seem to be accurately reflected in this picture. It seems impossible, how could a picture of one survivor’s face reflect the horror of millions of deaths and tortured people? But it does. You can almost see into his mind, because you know just by looking at him that he is re-living the most unimaginably painful and terrible part of his life. And he probably has to re-live it every day. You can see in his eyes and face that it haunts him, just like it would haunt anybody.