From William Randolph Hearst’s obscene opulence to Bernie Sander’s emergence from the shadows, this is the awesome power of the Daily Photo Game. But seriously… I could not help the comparison here. One of the ultimate exploiters, W.R.H and the newly crowned “voice of the voiceless”, Bernie Sanders. What a conceptual dichotomy!

My image ignores compositional imperatives, the light is weak on the hero subject, the background is cluttered with extraneous distractive elements, yet the pairing lives on in our minds. The ultimate Capitalist vs. the ultimate Socialist, or at least by American standards. Frankly, W.R.H would kick Bernie’s ass in the ring. However, this image as art is somewhat challenged on the aesthetic side.

I grant you that the visual transition is jarring (those of you who have read this far), with little visual connective tissue between the two images. But where this image lives is in the connective tissue of your own grey matter. The image compares two systems, so timely for the 2016 political campaign or any political venue for that matter… power (wealth) or equality (fairness). But does the image’s social and political content breathe substantive merit to the topic beyond our addiction to the pacified, pretty and homogenized images in the 21st Century? Can imagery influence our decisions? Does this image help or hurt to crystallize these political subjects? I’’ll leave these questions to the viewer to answer.

Shot along the Willamette River today, I asked our captain to nose into this house boat and shoot this image, but only after the fact did I discover its relevance as my play for today’s DPG image.