Untitled

Good Friday in Southern Spain (La Linea)..

Critiques are welcome....thanks...

Terrible meaning to these garments here in the states but good photography.

Fantastic original image. Thanks for sharing

fantastic and suggestive image!!!

Looks like KKK parade

I'm very impressed!

Excellent photographical and post-processing work here. You achieved a strong mood, maybe too scary, when in fact it is not... Was the intention of the photographer to confuse the audience? Or the intention was a completely different one, but failed? Or are we all so "contaminated" with Hollywood?s films, that we cannot react in the right way?

 

As John has already pointed out, this image has a terrible and completely different meaning in the states. It would be good to know why and how such an old custom was transformed there in a way of racist's behavior...

 

Being one of the most important, significative and picturesque festivities in Spain, I always was surprised that none of the spanish photographers here in P.net ever posted a single image of Penitents or any of the other accompanying people in the march through the streets... I wish I could only manage to post mine some day... :-)

an image that lends itself to accompanying words...

The effects are more of what someone would use for a scary type of atmosphere, giving the shot one of those haunting types of mood, when in fact because this is a celebration I might have done something very different with the effects. The fact that it was shot at dark, that the white glows as if to be ghostly, and the fact that the small child participates while holding his father's hand is someone eery, but most of these feelings come from the contamination of the kkk and the horrid violence that they have wreaked on our society. I like the shot. I think in fact it is beyond great. Lovely piece, and Im sure it will get lots of comments as people in the states see it.

Very well done!

 

It is unfortunate that such attires are so immediately attached to negativity here in the US. In Spain, long before the existence of the Ku Klux Klan, this procession has always equates to positivity. Being a religious event, the child holding father's hand causes as much stir there as a child holding a mother's hand walking a Palm Sunday procession here in the US. The glow effect, instead of being "ghostly," can also be looked at as angel-like or being "spiritual." It's all in the eyes of the viewers and their set of experiences and memories. The confusion between Spanish Penitents and the KKK are much worse than say the 5-pointed star (Hollywood really rides that one to the max.) It would have been helpful if Antonio would've elaborated more about the event at the critique request level, but since this is a norm in Spain, it probably didn't even cross his mind. Not his fault at all to say the least.

 

Antonio, congratulations on a remarkable capture.

at first glance I thought too that they were kkk,

but if they are not then what do they represent and why do they cover their faces?

Excerpt from this URL http://www.monteparaiso.net/spanish_life/easter.htm

 

"Spain and fiesta seem almost synonymous to the foreign imagination, but at no time is the relationship between the two more symbiotic than during Easter.

 

Semana Santa is the one time of the year when the Spanish love of colour, gaiety and noisy celebration is tempered with a touch of solemnity as Spain's predominantly Catholic people keep faith with the forms and spirit of the traditional religious observance of their forefathers to commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

 

While the Semana Santa festivities are a national celebration of passion and life, and most towns and cities mark them with solemn religious acts and processions, nowhere is the grandiosity and the religious spirit of Semana Santa in Spain more perfectly captured than in Sevilla.

 

On the four days of Semana Santa members of various brotherhoods (Hermandades) clad in the forbidding hooded dress of penitents (nazarenos), and carrying candles, pass through the streets, accompanying large and elaborately adorned carved groups representing saints, or scenes from the Passion, or one of Sevilla's numerous Virgins. Each of the floats or 'pasos' makes their slow progress to the Cathedral from the church of its brotherhood through streets thronged with tens of thousands of onlookers. Once they reach their destination they pass through the Cathedral and then embark upon the return journey to their starting points.

 

Halts in this procession are frequent and seats which may be booked at various sites for the series of four days, and other vantage points should be taken up in good time, having checked in advance the approximate hour at which the pasos pass. The 'saetas', ostensibly spontaneous exhibitions of religious fervour, are often sung by professionals as part of the pageant.

 

In other cities such as Madrid, Segovia, Avila, San Vicente de Sonsierra and Valverde de la Vera the Semana Santa processions, particularly on Good Friday, are even more lugubrious with robed and hooded penitents, looking like members of the Klu Klux Klan, marching, many of them bare foot, in chains and carrying heavy wooden crosses, behind effigies of Christ crucified or on the road to Calvary.

 

In Madrid an image of the Christ of Medinaceli is paraded through the streets accompanied by a procession of people carrying chains and shackles dressed in the white medieval garb of penitents.

 

While Valverde de la Vera (Cᣥres) has a unique procession, with echoes of the Inquisition in it, as well as of the medieval flagellants who wandered across Europe announcing the imminence of the day of the final judgment. In the procession the 'Empalaos' (The impaled ones), walk through the town wearing hoods and in bare feet as if on their way to Calvary with their arms tightly bound to a crossbeam. On top of their heads they wear a crown of thorns. From each side of the crossbars rings and swords up to a weight of thirty kilos are hung.

 

The further South you go in Spain the less austere the celebrations seem to be. In Elche (Alicante) the crowds thronging the streets during the procession of the Hallelujahs, shower the 'pasos' carrying the Resurrected Christ and the Virgin of the Asuncion with a downpour of multicoloured confetti.

 

While in Gandí¡ (Valencia) people from all over Spain, come to see the famous procession of the paso of the 'Christ of the Flagellation' on Good Friday, with the religious festivities culminating on Easter or Resurrection Sunday with the procession of the 'Glorious Encounter'.

 

The history of the present-day traditions of Semana Santa in Spain have their origins in the medieval 'Reconquista' (re-conquest) of Southern Spain from the Moors by the Christian kingdoms of the North. Hermandades were formed during the re-conquest to rescue injured soldiers from the battlefields and to bury the dead. The hermandades were first organized according to medieval membership of a professional guild, and by the 16th century, the tradition of processions to symbolize the journey of Christ to Calvary was firmly established in Spain.

 

Whatever you do, wherever you are, make sure you don't miss out on the spectacle and the religious passion of the processions. Each town and city is sure to have its own unique interpretation of what Semana Santa means, and each one of these interpretations is certain to be unforgettable."

 

If some of you want to see something more, you can rent a german film, "Bin ich sch�n?" (Am I beautiful?), with Franka Potente. These processions are shown there as a kind of context. Nice film. Also some of Pedro Almodovar's films (don?t remember wich of them...)

Great shot. Cgrts!

My congratulations to Antonio for this shot which not everybody seems to understand.

BUT AFTER WILSON?S EXPLANATIONS I HAVE TO CONGRATULATE HIM AS WELL FOR HIS DEEP KNOWLEDGE ABOUT SPAIN. OLɠY OLɡ!!!!

thanks to everyone for the critiques....

And one more comment this work has more to say about hatred, it even suggests a beautiful display of how evil hate can become, just the glowing of the robes and how they look so clean and uniform, plus the child kind of completes the thought by somehow saying, this hatred doesnt end here it passes from generation to generation (which is the true evil of hatred, that it is a disease passed on...) anyway nice tones and technique in general , the desaturation creates a darker more refined version of what the image would normally look like, also I really like the effect that their hoods have on the (what i like to call the anti-matter above them) space they are like knives thusting outward to the rest of the world, comming to a point rather than a net ( the bain and total end product of fundimentalism that inspired the KKK) the points are singular and of one kind, and this brings up another thought, because they are singular they also within themselves represent another perspective upon close minded hatred, there is no choice within these individuals, choice is in my opinion what makes us human and if we cant have that...well congratulations excellent work in the field of not only photography but the art world and the world beyond. peace be with you.

Hatred...? Evil...? Fundamentalism...? Hmmm... I guess you didn't get what this image is about... You should read Wilson Tsoi's posted above.

It makes a lot better sense to us Americans after Wilson's explanation. I now don't find it evil or sinister, but more of a spiritual gathering. The effect is wonderful, very Regal looking, especially with the scepter in the man's hand and the detail of it. I think the child is less childlike, more like a minature man, but that adds to the interest. Nice job!

Una foto muy lograda. Bonitos tonos. Pena ese que da la espalda a la derecha y el de la izquierda no este entero. La verdad que impresiona. !Felicidades!

Excellent work!

Just for a moment I thought that it was a KKK rally in the U.S. I've seen one and don't care to see another.

 

I'm sure that you get tired of people saying things like that, since this kind of outfit in Spain means something else entirely. Good work.

 

--Lannie