This picture was taken at the main entrance of the Vatican, promptly after a public mass conducted by the Pope. I was on my way out to grab a snack when this woman appeared in front of me begging for a coin, trying to get a few cents from the numerous Christian tourists leaving the place. One could argue that it is the best place for seeking charity since the city is in itself supposed to be a representative of charity. However, one can see by the emptiness of her cup and the marked expression on her face, anguish after being denied so many times, that the old woman was in trouble, not only because she was suffering under a scorching sun, but also because nobody sees her, save the camera and you. Dressed in black, the elderly woman begs just outside of the limits of the Vatican. One can see the mighty phallic object that stands at the middle of the Divine City, with another phallic object pointing downwards from above. A decidedly a male symbol, it is the residence of the Pope, a contrastingly healthy man who dresses in white, and lives in a priceless house. When money loosens its shackles, imprisons characteristics towards its owner but assumes the form of walls to those ones around, gates, columns, arches, major buildings, fences, hierarchies, rules, propagandas aiming the change of values, and pretty much everything that can physically and mentally protect his properties. This extremely unbalanced division of wealth generates all sorts of problems, while society praises itself, and envies the causers and the means to achieve it. Ironically, the Church itself supposedly condemns the accumulation of wealth though it is an exception to its own teachings as their cause, whatever it may be, is in the name of a bigger purpose thus justifying any means they may take.
A clear example of control through capital is the line to get inside the Sistine Chapel and the contradictory non-waiting line service. The first thing to happen when you reach the line is to be approached by an uniformed person, interested in explaining to you that the line usually takes two hours and a half. Fortunately, he offers the possibility to avoid the line by paying him a certain (which one could deem abusive) amount of money. Therefore, he creates the need for his service by congesting the original line with privilege, a complete living system. One might think, ‘’how can he break into the line;” through an agency adjacent to the Vatican which almost certainly has a deal with the personnel that controls the entry to the Sistine Chapel. In the photo taken below, one must consider the woman’s point of view in order to divulge her true contradictory position in a privileged space by inverting one’s usual perspective of the exploited minorities supporting this giant named Capital. The blur might be due to the difficulty of to keeping one’s hand steady when facing the responsibility to capture in a single frame a metaphor, a representation, a small universe, a small scale of what our world is.