Mike Santos
The Weeping Frenchman, 1940
The studium of this image, of the weeping Parisian man during the Nazi’s victory march through Paris in 1940, is its symmetry. The man at the forefront forms a focal point from which two lines of people diverge toward either side of the photograph: along the road to the left and facing a building to the right. Further, the style of dress worn by everyone in the photograph is also appealing, formal and implying that these people live a life of relative prosperity which is being interrupted by this invasion. Seeing these people, especially the man weeping in the center, I am drawn into the photograph and want to enter the scene. However, I cannot do this because of the punctum, the man at the far right, who is staring directly at me without emotion. Not only does this bother me because it breaks continuity with the others in the photograph, but also because I can neither pretend I haven’t seen him nor try to crop him out without compromising the rest of the photograph. If I were to crop him out, the weeping man at the forefront would no longer be in the center and the whole would lose its symmetry. If I crop the other side to compensate for the loss, I would regain symmetry but only at the cost of the picture’s context. I would no longer see the buildings in the background which identify the setting as a Parisian street. I would be left only with three people crying without a discernible reason why.
