The Opposite of Love is...

...is not hate, but apathy.

Photographer: Me

I think this is one of my best pieces. Maybe even my best. I have my amazing, wonderful friends Amy and Julia to thank for the opportunity to take this photo. This was their AP Art History final.

They wanted to expose the depths of poverty in America, Ireland, Africa, and Asia in hopes of inspiring people to help those affected by it. The photos on the stomachs of the models show the despair in all four countries. The models are blindfolded to show that they are blind to it.

To get a feel for their thoughts, I have a piece of the paper they wrote to accompany the photos I took:

"In order to display this concept to its full extend we opted to take pictures of poverty around San Diego and then compare them to international shots. We then arranged them around the word "love" formed from people dressed in black to symbolize that poverty does not discriminate, it affects everyone, whether it be directly or indirectly. The people are blindfolded to represent how many are blind to the fact that their fellow human beings, their next door neighbors, are suffering. To further illustrate this concept we added the quote " the opposite of love is not hate, it is apathy" to the bottom of the word formed by people. We chose to form the word out of people because we felt that it made clear the fact that only man can help his fellow man, and he can only do so through compassion. Each of our pictures highlights certain aspects of poverty: the hunger, the loneliness, and the desperate conditions in which people have to live. We mounted them according to which pictures we felt were the best comparison shots. In order to further explain the significance of our project I offer you this…
Perhaps you just don’t see poverty. Perhaps you simply don’t care. But it is there. Oh yes, it is there. It is in the homeless man holding a sign, his mind mangled by a war that claimed too many. It is in the single mother of five who works three jobs and the cleans the floors or your eight room mansion, and it is in the children who have known nothing but hunger, who have lived lives of quiet desperation silently waiting for the day that they will get to go to school, or own a toy, or even play in the streets without fear. The days of a carefree childhood have been robbed from these children, ripped from their naïve clutches. Their innocence has been desiccated and their live prostrated as sacrifices before an apathetic public. Now ask yourself, are you part of that apathetic public? Do you look at the homeless man and laugh, tell him to get a job or take a shower? Do you see the single mother and condemn her for dropping out of school to take care of a family she had born far too soon? Do you look at the children and see mindless hopeless cases, destined to live in a state of perpetual poverty?
Many of you have heard of poverty, perhaps even seen it. Maybe you’ve even tried to better it by donating to some far off third world nation. However I am here to tell you that poverty is not an African epidemic. It is not Asian, and it is not eastern European. It is worldwide. It is here, and it is now. Open your eyes to the people around you. Look at how they live. Look at the pain, and look at the struggle."