Somewhere, probably in Britain, at some time before 1998, some person or persons in a gang of artists persuaded a group of unnamed elderly persons to re-pose some of the iconic photos of the twentieth century.

They are wonderful, and I can only wish there were more. The image above represents the meeting of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta (as if you didn’t get that instantly).

I just think they are hugely layered. They all have a sense of parody, which sits oddly with other, more terrible images. There is a version of that Iwo Jima photograph, which speaks to me about posing before history. The killing of Lee Harvey Oswald and a pair of the most powerful images of the Vietnam War point to the way in which terrible events project ordinary people into the frozen imagery that helps to define us as human.

And this one, for me, is about time and ageing, and the similarities and differences between the powerful and the rest of us. Stalin too was an elderly person in a funny hat, but this elderly person is utterly different. And entirely more valuable.

The whole set comes from here.

And it was spread around the internet by metafilter.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 11:23 pm and is filed under history, strangely compelling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.