famine

I love it, very well done!

PDE

Interesting work

POWERFUL!!!!!! an effective image and treatment to shout about this appalling issue. i read yesterday in the Economist magazine that the number of people hungry and malnurished around the globe has exploded this year, same time the investments banks robbed us blind. this piece of yours is so cathartic... so necessary to the moment. i call you friend. dp

I wasn't sure whether to show you my experiment.

Very much he is pulling me into such climates; -)

sorry for my bad english.

Great originality and perfect execution. 

A wonderful idea&result!

Haunting and very interesting!

Well done.

Take care,

Mário

well done, very nice

your work is incredible. i love it

Overwhelming. No words to describe emotions provoked by this work of art.

There's something that bothers me a bit about this photo. First, it seems hell-bent on NOT looking like a photo, so it seems at odds with itself. More importantly, it tries, through exaggerated pathos, to make art from suffering. Now, we all know tales of the suffering artist and how that can lead to creative expression. But the connection here is something different. It is trying to depict suffering and turn that depiction into art, in a fairly obvious manner. Something about that turns me off. Documentary work depicts plenty of suffering and is important and significant for doing that. And a lot of documentary is or becomes art. But I think that's quite a bit different from what's happening here, where the intention seems to be art in a fairly narrowly defined view of art. It's accepting a classically portrayed, romanticized and somewhat clichéd view of art and trying to place a very real and awful state of affairs into that very distant, idealized, and historical look of art. Anyway, I'd like to hear others' thoughts on this because this is kind of a gut reaction on my part, and I'm a little uncertain about it, to be honest. But I thought I'd share it as a possible opening to some discussion.

Fred, I am not sure I even got to get that far as there were some visual issues that just didn't let me get too deeply into the image.

When I saw the thumbnail, I thought this could be an interesting image but when I opened it, I just felt a lot of dissonance. The most obvious thing for me was the red in the crease of the forward hand--it doesn't seem to have any purpose--and then the rose-ish tint on the highlights of the out of focus hand. I have seen this before, back 20 years ago when I first started playing with duo-tone effects. I don't mind the green tint, but I do mind the rose/red that doesn't seem to have any purpose.

The second thing that struck me was that the forward hand just looked really awkward. My feeling as to why grew into several issues. The first one I noticed was that the textural overlay seems to fade out as we get past the edge of the palm. This creates a disconnect in the unity of the image as the hand takes on this more crisp feeling due more to clarity than focus (texture missing). Next, this hand seems, by its general placement, to be from the figure in the background, however, it doesn't feel like it is from the same person in either its geometry or in its characteristics--seems more distressed, and dirty, in appearance than the figure in the background.

The figure seems too centered right, which along with the hand's weight leaves the image feeling very off balance--also accented by the difficulty I have reconciling the hand's geometry with that individual.
So basically, I just don't feel the image has the sense of being unified and just left me cold pretty quickly.

I realize this is pretty harsh and I don't mean to diminish the effort, as I think it could have had promise, there are just some issues that threw the effort off.

And without the title, I would not have thought hunger or famine. The finger seems to be in a sinister "come-hither" motion while the figure's gesture seems more like "Oh Sh_t!". I just can't reconcile much here is the bottom line.

Fred, isn't that an assumption on your part? I always get a bit uneasy when one says what the intent of the photographer was when making the photograph. It may come across that way to you, but I really don't know if that (regarding art) was an intention of the photographer. While I don't think it's fair to say what the photograph or photographer are trying to do, it's certainly fair to say that's how the photograph comes across to you. It's a difference between "what is" and "what it seems to me."

I didn't need a title for this photograph. The outstretched hand, the condition of the hand, and then in the background a person shown in a very anonymous way and covering the face with the other hand in a way that is often associated with hurt or shame (yes, perhaps I'm reading into the photo, just as I suggested Fred might be wrong in doing so; but like Fred, this is just my interpretation), all of this conveys to me a condition of hurt, of asking for help, perhaps of shame for being in such need. To me, it's the concept of such hurt and need for help made into or illustrated by a photograph. I think it's very effective, but I would drop the title or make it more generic. To me, this is not a depiction of famine but of something else about the human condition that could arise from a lot of circumstances, including famine.

While I can see the red that John mentioned, I really didn't pay any attention or spend any time thinking about it. I found it easy to dismiss in light of the other elements of the photograph. I wonder if Bozena meant anything by this small hint of red in an otherwise B&W photograph.

Bożena stated in her comment that this photo was an experiment.

As experiments go, I think we can all relate to a process of trying different things to see where different choices might lead us. This happens more often than not when we have an image on-hand and just know it has potential, but not quite sure about a definitive path.

This picture is a cousin of another in Bożena's portfolio:
http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=13042032

Both received similar treatments but the other offers us more clues. Technically it appears as a process of selective blurring and sharpening to simulate extreme depth of field to exaggerate the fingers. A grunge-layer complete with cracks is added to accentuate mood.

To me, the execution of the finished photo is 5% photography and 95% Photoshop. The grunge layer would have been better absent the visible tree limbs/branches. It succeeds because it's a composition we don't see often, but the predictable (and some might say "overused") treatment diminishes both its technical and aesthetic merit, albeit pleasantly applied.

The red looks like blood within a deep callous or at least my impression looking at the rugged dirty hand. As for the photo, a little to raw for my visual taste.

Stephen, as a fellow photographer, I am often interested in approaching a photo from the point of view of what the intention of the photographer may have been. And I often see that intention in the photo. I am not clairvoyant, so of course what I see is what I see and how I see it is to a great extent a matter of opinion or of my perspective, as it is for all of us. I also think that photos often show intentions much more honestly and genuinely than the words a photographer might use to describe their own intentions, so I wouldn't necessarily give more credence to the words a photographer speaks about their photo than to what the photo itself is saying more directly and in a more unfettered way than many of our own statements about our photos or our intentions.

I have read enough critiques to know that many critics have come to the conclusion that a photo or photographer is attempting to do this or that (and sometimes that photographer won't even know it or realize it). Many photos look as if the photographer is trying too hard. Were I to ask the particular photographer, I don't know whether or not they would agree that they are trying too hard and I also don't necessarily think they would be the authority on that.

I suppose I could have qualified my comment and said "it looks to me like . . . " but I just don't find that necessary. Rather, I hope it is assumed. And if not, I can live with that. I'm not about to put an IMO in front of everything I say about the kinds of intentions I see played out in others' photos. I invited a dialogue and thought I was pretty clear in saying I wanted to open up a discussion on the matter and wasn't making a certain and final claim, so I'm content with my original comment and the way it was framed and stated.

I will add that I'm usually quite flattered when a viewer of my own photos suggests what intentions he or she sees in my work. It means they are personalizing it and seeing the man behind the curtain, or at least thinking about him. I don't assume they're projecting something onto me as much as that they are internalizing something about the photo and addressing the motivations behind what they are experiencing. It's a means of connecting, through the photo, to the photographer, and I welcome it. I don't worry about whether they've got my intentions right or wrong. Rather, I take it as valuable information about the way they're seeing my photo or the way my photo is working on them.

Some good, some bad.... As a composition, as a play with depth of field, I kind of like what this photo does. There is an intent in its composition that's been done right, so on a level of "how well does the photographer achieve what I think (s)he tried to achieve" - quite well.
But it's too much melodrama. Too obvious, lacking subtlety. This is not necessarily bad, if this is used as a poster sized advert for donating to charity, for example, it could be a highly effective photo. If it's meant to be a fine art photo, a documentary shot or similar, then to me, it's far too blunt. (Note: I really do not know which would be applicable - I didn't check the "original" photo page yet, nor the portofolio of Bozena, I'm purely responding to this photo).

I do not like the photoshop treatment with the scratches; it adds to the sense of over-the-top melodrama, while in my view, the photo lurking beneath doesn't need this treatment at all to reach the effect it has.
Another thing that leaves me with a bit of doubt: the hand seems much older than the person behind. Yes, this is pure interpretation on my behalf, but it does rob the photo of some of its "inner logic". This could be due to the photoshopping, but to me, it makes the photo somewhat incoherent.

Entering for the first time the hand at the FG and the figure in the BG were not connected to each other.

Entering again,my discomfort even grew.I think that it was overdone, the hand's contrast to the body is too strong IMO.

I think that if I try to understand the photgrapher's intent to depict a human situation it went too far away. It looks a lot of PS, and the result, for me,instead of drawing me into the situation does exactly the opposit.

I think this picture is a good illustration of the relationship between technique and expression.

A photo expresses itself through a photographer's technique much the same way musicians express their musicality through performance technique. Techniques are often adopted, but not necessarily essential for optimal expression which can result in the perception of excess. I believe this photo is such an example.

I'm not seeing a lot of nuance in this picture. It comes across as using brute force Photoshop to communicate a message that is later conjured, almost as though it wants to be different for difference sake.

For viewers not familiar or haven't tried "grunge layering", here are a number of resources and many YouTube tutorials for educational purposes:
https://www.google.ca/#q=grunge+layer
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=grunge+layer

This is posed. it reminds me of the famous poster with Uncle Sam pointing his finger and the caption, "I want you." Uncle Sam wanted soldiers. This poster (yes, poster) is speaking for all the hungry people of the world, only there are no words, save for the title.
This image looks at first like fine art but it is actually a poster calling for action to feed the world's starving people. As fine art this image is trite pictorialism. As a poster with its crucial title it is effective. i mean it makes you think about hunger.

I have often written how important titles are to photographs. The title is everything here. With this title you can forgive the picturialist format. It does not matter. The message is everything.

I think it's striking how different Alex and I are regarding the title on this photograph. We (in the collective sense) really are a diverse group, and that's a good thing (sometime frustrating, maybe, but still good).