Chiaroscuro

 

This comes a little late but I'll post it anyway.

I've always believed that stark contrasts between different composition elements, thrown within a single visual frame, bring out considerable esthetic value and pictorial intensity, values I constantly seek to achieve as I tackle the sensory world around me with a camera or a paintbrush in hand.

What contrast often does is project through dissonance a sense of complementarity and equilibrium, or disequilibrium for that matter, that would otherwise be evasive to the observing eye, and if not evasive, then often not powerful enough to stir viewers and leave a definitive mark in their minds.

Having said that, the contrast evoked by images depicting people who have nothing in common but their self-serving disparate agendas, mascarading harmony and union to a naively optimistic, if not credulous crowd, stirs not an emotion of esthetic satisfaction, but one of utter disgust.

I just hope these pictures and mental images remain vivid when the sad lebanese governing "elite" goes back to its ritualistic name-calling, finger-pointing and poison-spitting, and we, the free and powerful youth, go back to our daily ranting, raving, and blaming everyone but ourselves routine.