A New Perspective On One Of Last Century's Most Enduring Images
While the original image of the “tank man” might be described as an icon (a representation with purely symbolic and decontextualized meaning), this photograph makes clearer (for a number of reasons that include all the other people in the photo running away and the eye-level perspective) that this was a regular dude carrying his groceries home, but then decided to do something completely crazy.
What moves me about this photo is the reality of place you captured — it doesn’t look like a heroic scene to me, but rather a dusty, smog-filled tribute to human civility, with its well-kept trees; but also to our confused nature, in the form of a tractor, to build the square, the bus, to bring people there, and the tank, to destroy the place.
