Images That Move You

[asterix]

I was moved by an image in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum.

It was called 'The Nightwatch' by Rembrandt and I was standing there looking at this very large picture, lost in thought. Suddenly there was a tug at my elbow and a tourist said 'Would you mind getting out of the way, I am trying to take a photograph'. I was so surprised, I just moved. And anyway, the magic was lost.

(Photography is not allowed in that museum: I wish I'd carried out a citizen's arrest)

 

[Maizie]

Remembrance day gets me every year, just a picture of a poppy can set me off. I like this one a lot (Bill Stone (right), 108, Harry Patch (centre), 110 and Henry Allingham, 112 (left), picture on 11 Nov 2008).

 

[Over The Hill]

http://markmeynell.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/churchill_1024.jpg

This is a bad copy of the original. I have a nice framed print on my study wall.

It was taken in 1940 when Europe had fallen to the Germans (or Nazis as we seem to call them now) and before the USA could be bothered to come in. I think he knew that what he did at that desk would mean either Britain (or even the world) going under or not.
I cannot imagine having to deal with that responsability.

I find it is really inspiring to have that image. If I get a bit under pressure or have a problem in life that is getting me down I look at this picture and suddenly the problem I have is tiny and managable. I also think "what would Churchill have done" and that often gives me the solution.

If like me you dont have God you need something else sometimes.

 

[DaveP]

This is the first picture that shook me to my core, it still does on so many levels...

View attachment 1755

 

[Disgruntled Goat]

Two sides of the same shitty coin but both incredibly moving:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3268/3120480106_9ace69c7cd_o.jpg

The night before the burial of her husband's body, Katherine Cathey refused to leave the casket, asking to sleep next to his body for the last time. The Marines made a bed for her, tucking in the sheets below the flag. Before she fell asleep, she opened her laptop computer and played songs that reminded her of "Cat," and one of the Marines asked if she wanted them to continue standing watch as she slept. "I think it would be kind of nice if you kept doing it," she said. "I think that's what he would have wanted."


And:

[SIZE=-1]"Stop that car!" someone shouted out, seemingly simultaneously with someone firing what sounded like warning shots -- a staccato, measured burst. The car continued coming. And then, perhaps less than a second later, a cacophony of fire, shots rattling off in a chaotic, overlapping din. The car entered the intersection on its momentum and still shots were penetrating it and slicing it. Finally, the shooting stopped, the car drifted listlessly, clearly no longer being steered, and came to a rest on a curb. Soldiers began to approach it warily.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]The sound of children crying came from the car. I walked up to the car and a teenaged girl with her head covered emerged from the back, wailing and gesturing wildly. After her came a boy, tumbling onto the ground from the seat, already leaving a pool of blood.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]"Civilians!" someone shouted, and soldiers ran up. More children -- it ended up being six all told -- started emerging, crying, their faces mottled with blood in long streaks. The troops carried them all off to a nearby sidewalk.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]It was by now almost completely dark. There, working only by lights mounted on ends of their rifles, an Army medic began assessing the children's injuries, running his hands up and down their bodies, looking for wounds. Incredibly, the only injuries were a girl with a cut hand and a boy with a superficial gash in the small of his back that was bleeding heavily but wasn't life-threatening. The medic immediately began to bind it, while the boy crouched against a wall.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]From the sidewalk I could see into the bullet-mottled windshield more clearly. The driver of the car, a man, was penetrated by so many bullets that his skull had collapsed, leaving his body grotesquely disfigured. A woman also lay dead in the front, still covered in her Muslim clothing and harder to see.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Meanwhile, the children continued to wail and scream, huddled against a wall, sandwiched between soldiers either binding their wounds or trying to comfort them. The Army's translator later told me that this was a Turkoman family and that the teenaged girl kept shouting, "Why did they shoot us? We have no weapons! We were just going home!"[/SIZE]
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