the audacity of shutter speed

I love this image. Visually thematically and if you’ll allow it terminologically. Visually it is stunning. Seeing the movement of light never gets tiring. Thematically it is a rebuke of everything that I despise about modern “conservative” politics. Terminologically I like the fact that instead of a general affront to the Romney campaign or to Governor Walker of Wisconsin (I in fact have no idea. I only know that this comes from Wisconsin.) it refers to a specific political-philosophical approach to debt. On a higher level I enjoy the image because of how the photographer uses shutter speed (presumably as I know quite little about photography) to represent time. With an extremely rapid shutter speed we would be left wondering where this photo was taken. Or why we should question austerity. Or perhaps we would start to get angry at the Romney campaign as a conduit for our animosity resulting from our “progressive” views. However by showing us the time lapse in the image we are left to think about the photographer. We think about the individuals in the cars who must have seen this even as the rays of light carried their message from the bridge. We think about the itch in the hair of the woman holding the q or how cold the cars rushing by must have made it on that Wisconsin night. Maybe it was summer? We are left to think of this protest as one of individuals who believe in what they are doing and not simply as a message on a bridge. It is a method of revealing the presentation in the product itself. It uses the Verfremdungseffekt to stop us from simply focusing on the words themselves and instead realize that they were produced and that this was carried out by people with actual grievances. Perhaps people without health insurance. By announcing him/herself in the shutter speed we grasp the entirety of the event’s background and understand more deeply the meaning of the protestors’ argument. Instead of simply affirming the argument we are left wanting to act. Exactly as Brecht intended.