The crowds are surrounding them but love doesn't care and they dance because the music and the smell and the noise is more invigorating than destroying, the atmosphere is more hugging than canceling, and the love is even more penetrating than the tango.
parade
Schützenfest 2012 - the Parade
in Photography
It is said to be the biggest (i.e. longest at 12 km) march of shooters in Germany (anywhere), it still leaves me wondering about it - where are the shooters? But it is a colorful parade of sorts with tons of micro-groups each representing their historic heritage. I observe the groups, trying to guess the participants' age and their relation. Most are old, some are children. None are there in between (apart from the occasional one who appears to be a biological copy of one of the older ones). What is the purpose of this entertainment? Sorry - not the "purpose" (which is entertainment to the masses) but the "function" (and that's since 1955). As a photographer, one simply needs to look at it as a display of mastery - the Schützenkönig beats the rest but they are all part of the justification of this gathering. More pictures HERE.
Schützenfest in Hannover, 2012
in Photography
The sun shines over the laighter (and the screams). People wear colours (they are colours with strange body paint and weekend chinos). They always choose the less scary roller coaster first. First, they go on the Ferris wheel - to get used to the height. Then they move on - to the next stand where they are turned upside down (and you rush to collect the coins falling off their pockets). There is food on every second stand: chinese, german, sweets, chinese, german, sweets, chinese, german, sweets ... And you feel full from the thick smell alone; your hands get sticky from the sweet sugar vapours.
I walk through the crowds - no one else has their headphones on, no one else walks alone, no one else is there to observe the people, no one else is there to photograph the people, no one is there looking for the questions (nor for the anwers). They are there for the adrenaline rush - the one that tilts the scales towards "yes" when one doubts one's emotional state. They are there for the glucose rush - the one that makes them alert to nothing but their senses to perceive the colours of the festival through an ever more acid curtain. They are there for the plain human need - to love and to belong (because their other Maslowian needs have been covered already on the stand before).
Rainbow Parade - Accidental Encounters
in Photography
The streets are often surprising. They catch us off guard, from the back when we are looking ahead: they fill our eyes with colors, when all we can see is monochrome dullness; they fill out ears with the sounds of joy and Madonna, when all we want to listen to is Scriabin or Prokofiev; they clear our breathing passages with the smell of strong smell of “Angel”, when all we want is the clarity of spearmint. And that’s why I love the streets! You can’t get mad at them about anything. They are there for you when you need them even when you don’t realize you do.
I started the day quite bored and ready to sit in front of the computer watching mindlessly movie after movie when I decided to take a walk. And ended up all of a sudden in the middle of a Love Parade. And the next 3-4 hours were spent walking around the crowds of people – people who did not know when to stop, who didn’t know why they should ever stop, people who knew what to smile for, people who knew that if you wear red trousers, there is no way your day to be bad. People who knew that PDA (public display of affection) is in fact beautiful – even if the individual persons aren’t particularly so. And so they did, undisturbed by the journalists taking their picture in an arrogantly intrusive way sticking their big Canons and lenses literally in their faces. Where is the boundary between being one of the crowd and being one in the crowd?
