Street Scene, Odessa, Ukraine

This ia a view of a neighborhood sidewalk, Odessa, Ukraine. Simple,

expressive graffiti seems to be a common mode of expression in

Odessa and elsewhere in Ukraine. Your ratings and critiques are

most welcome. (If you rate harshly or very negatively, please

submit a helpful and constructive critique/Please share your

superior knowledge to help improve my art). Thanks. Enjoy! ;~))

John

This was what critics of Henri Cartier-Bresson called a 'waiter'. I saw this graffiti and tried it first as a vertical with the window, left. It didn't work. The street was sparsely walked on and I had to wait. I moved down slightly and photographed horizontally at an angle to get both windows and the graffiti, then waited. Pedestrians came and went, but sometimes in clumps and sometimes their stride wasn't right. This was frame 38. I'm glad you appreciate it.

Thanks so much.

John.

Is it an accident that the window framing for these windows does not divide the windows into equal parts, but instead the wooden framework in each is in the form of a Christian cross and each window is therefore divided into four parts of two unequal sizes?

If the Soviets had noticed, since they were an atheist state, they probably would have demolished the framework, but it's subtle. . . and they probably didn't think about it, just as I missed it previously.

Ukraine, like the rest of the former U.S.S.R. has a strong Russian Orthodox religious tradition, and this building probably predates the Soviet revolution, so it seems very likely that the window framework was placed there intentionally (John . . . on re-examination of this increasingly revealing image).

For those perusing this file and wondering about the small no. of views received by this photo and others posted this day or posted in the top-rated photos galleries, Photo.net suffered from total failure of the Photo.net counting system. Photo.Net was 'down' and the photo count was lost for this and other photos, it appears, when the sytem was restored, with the system recording only '8' views for most of an entire day of being posted, with more ratings being posted to this file, than 'views'.

John