Photo Competition

This picture is not from Panama. It is from South Africa. It is relevant because I changed the name of the blog from "beinvenido a panama" to the eponymous "Brian Steidinger."

Which I feel I should explain. It isn't egomania. I was trying to increase the likelihood that this page would appear in a google search of my name.

Anyways, I have submitted this photo into a competition at the University of Illinois. If you are a student at the UIUC you can vote at http://uviewillinois.com. The main prize is small but the contest interests me nonetheless.

What you are seeing is a man named Clifford who makes his money by taking groups of students and tourists into rural townships, where they take lots of pictures and buy some hand-crafted goods. The township is inside the Wits Rural facility in eastern South Africa. Wits Rural is literally an ecological/anthropological station set up to study human beings living inside rural villages. The name of the village, I believe, is Belferden. That sounds vaugely Afrikaaner.

Clifford is wearing a black Adidas jacket and pants, despite the fact that it is nearly 100 degrees outside. He is sending a text message. Behind him a witchdoctor is walking away. Disdainfully? In symbolic rejection of modernization? Of assimulation? I'll leave the interpretation to you. But if you ask me, it looks like she has attitude, and there is a tension to the shot.