No but the history behind this picture is really interesting
The reason that everyone always looked miserable in old photos wasn’t that they took too long to take. Once photography became widespread it took only seconds to take a picture.
It was because getting your photo taken was treated the same as getting your portrait painted. A very serious occasion meant so thst your descendants would know that ypu existed and what you looked like.
But one time some British dudes went to china to go on an anthropological expedition, and they met some rural Chinese farmers and decided to take their pictures. Now, these people weren’t exposed to the weird culture of the time around getting your photo taken, so this guy just flashed a big grin during the photo because he was told to strike a pose and that’s the pose he wanted to strike.
I think painted portraits and old photos give us the idea that in general people were just really unhappy because those are the visuals we have. This is so refreshing.
Hey, look; “Man Laughing Alone With Rice” is back on my dash.
“In Iran, we do not have homosexuals like in your country.”
— Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking at Columbia University, September 24, 2007.
While today some Occidental countries accept marriage for gays and
lesbians, in Iran, homosexuality is still punishable by death. This
sanction prohibits homosexuals from living out their sexuality openly.
Their only legal options are to leave the country, hide their sexuality,
or choose transsexuality, a practice tolerated by law but also
considered pathological.
In Denizli, a small town in Turkey, hundreds of Iranian gay refugees
have put their lives on pause while waiting to join a host country where
they can freely live their sexualities. In this context of uncertainty,
where anonymity is the best protection, this series of photographs
questions the fragile nature of identity and gender concepts. It tries
to give back to these people a face that their country has temporarily
stolen.
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