masked people

Sometimes a series of photos tells a story that a single photograph probably cannot tell alone. While taking photographs of the politically "left" counter-protesters at the Liberty or Death political rally held in Seattle, WA on August 18, 2018, at first it was the handheld, and hand painted, sign that said "please stop killing us" that was eye catching. However, still photography at events such as political protests is a process. This process involves staying focused on a single subject and working, very quickly, repeatedly, to capture various aspects of a single focus, as well as to obtain correct photographic mechanism such as focus and framing. Of course in situations like political rallies, the subjects are constantly moving, and sometimes that might rather not be photographed, despite the fact that they have arrived at a public event for the specific purpose of being paid attention to and to try to communicate their message. 

During the just describe process, photographs of different aspects of the "please top killing us" sign, and the woman holding it provide varying insights about the relevant politics and the potential politics being communicated by the woman holding the sign. In this instance, surely a viewer must wonder if the woman displaying that she doesn't shave her armpits has unshaved armpits to communicate a message, just as her sign is intended to communicate a message. One is left to wonder, what, if any, politics are related to women in America who don't shave their armpits, since armpit shaving among women in "Western Culture" seems like a pretty well solidified cultural "norm". 

Meanwhile, the sign itself seems clearly meant to send a message to someone. Unfortunately, the political left, who often espouse extreme socialist/communist/anarchist don't want to be interviewed and they don't want to be identified. They express their reluctance with additional cues such as wearing masks as this woman does. In the case of this woman though, the mask doesn't seem to obscure her identity in the least. Notably, the people across the street from the counter-protesters were willing to be interviewed. According to the people at the rally across the street, who had a permit from the City of Seattle to use the City Hall courtyard, they were not the people the counter-protesters believed them to be. The people at the official rally across the street from the counter-protesters, who included Jewish people, African American people, Asian American people, and so on, insisted that they are not the "Nazis", "KKK", "Fascists", and so on depicted in the signs of the counter-protesters. This stark dichotomy make photojournalistic recordation of these types of events all the more fascinating, since the signs, the signals, the attire, in additional to the verbal and visual messages all tell complex truths that present day corporate fake news mass-media doesn't think is newsworthy. Notably as well, corporate mass media attended the August 18, 2018 event, but very little of their reporting, disclosed much of anything relevant about what transpired at the event politically. 

This series of three photographs, which are presented in the sequence they were photographed, first shows just the "Please Stop Killing Us". the second shows the woman holding the sign, but it doesn't clarify what sign she is holding. The last of the three photographs includes both the woman's face, and enough of the sign to identify it. However, mostly importantly, in the third photograph, the woman stared directly into the center of the camera's lens as the shutter snapped!