if you haven't had a look at the world press photo site, i highly recommend it. the winners gallery for 2005 gives a great retrospective of the events of 2004, both high profile and low, ordinary and historic. excuse the pun, but i think this collection of photos (if it is preserved in any way, which i assume it will be) will be a fascinating snapshot for future generations of the world as it was circa 2004, providing as it does the occasionally intentional but often incidental glimpses of technology, fashion, living conditions, sports, and just about everything else that was part of life as we knew it in the last year.
i especially like these from the nature category:
the weirdest photo must be the headless gymnast:
my favourite, though, is the swimmer who left his legs behind:
also superb (as you'd expect) is the gallery of winners of the last 50 years. for the most part it is a chronicle of tragedy and suffering, but in many ways that is the exactly the history of the last 50 years. after how many millenia of living together in this world, the cruelty and indifference of human beings to others is absolutely shocking, and it continues seemingly unabated.
viewing these pictures, it is easy to believe the assertions of rene girard, that all human societies are structured around the making of victims, killing and excluding in order to define and assert the identity of the group. in knowing jesus, james alison brilliantly turns this idea to the dealings of god with humankind as told in the bible, reframing the gospel as the story of jesus, the gratuitously given, forgiving victim, who willingly suffered the ultimate exclusion and became the ultimate sacrifice, in order to provide the way and means for us to have true life in ultimate freedom. this freedom is only found in escaping the tyranny of reactionary and reciprocating violence, moving from the endless cycle of victimhood and victimising to relationships of free and joyful giving of oneself to others, and, in so doing, joining the new society of forgiving victims which is the kingdom of god founded in jesus.
well, i didn't really intend to get all heavy, but these things are on my mind, and i am increasingly sickened by the violence and cruelty in the world and the wilful, repugnant indifference of the privileged (myself included) to the suffering of others. may we grow each day closer to the life god requires of us, in the words of the prophet, "to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God" (micah 6:8, NIV).
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