coyotesuspect

I interviewed today for a position on the editorial staff of the campus creative writing magazine. It was a group interview, and, as part of it, we were asked to look at two pieces and decide whether or not we would include them in the magazine. One was a poem, the other a photograph.

The poem just wasn't very good. The photograph, however, was interesting; it was of a pile of trash in a Chinese street  with people casually walking by. The title was "Public Health." It had bright, visually arresting colors, an interesting and thought provoking subject matter, and a great title. But the composition was jumbled and discordant, the cropping done poorly. It was, as one of the other candidates for the position put it, "like a point and shoot picture." If it had been cropped better, or taken at a better angle, it could have been a very nice piece.

One of the interviewers brought up the point that maybe the photographer had intended it to look that way. Maybe the composition was supposed to look like a point and shoot in order to say something about the chaoticness of a rapidly industrializing China, about the casualness with which the people in the photograph treated the pile of garbage.

spnland

Thanks to familiardevil  for looking this over for me. It's always good to have someone support my crazy. <3 (And, yes, I kept the title because it amused me.)