Roadrunner Blocked by U.S. Border Wall Wins Best Bird Photo of 2021
petapixel.com
petapixel.com
But am I the only one that thinks this was also chosen for a political statement?
"flying is limited to gliding from a nest or perch to the ground, or between perches"
"Male roadrunners perch atop fence posts and rocks"
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Greater_Roadrunner/lifeh...
It's logically possible for it to be both at once, depending on context but it's an interestingly contradictory aesthetic.
For what it's worth, the competition site says [0]:
> Typically, an awarded photo will:
> Be properly in focus,
> show good use of exposure and lighting,
> display technical excellence in its execution,
> and capture a unique moment, behaviour, or story.
The last criteria seems like it could answer your question.
The announcement page also has this blurb [1]:
> The image tells an important story of habitat fragmentation, and how structures such as the border wall can prevent wildlife from migrating and moving into other areas. The wall dominates the image, with the roadrunner seemingly powerless and small in the frame.
[0]: https://www.birdpoty.com/news/judging-bird-poty-how-we-decid...
> The image tells an important story of habitat fragmentation, and how structures such as the border wall can prevent wildlife from migrating and moving into other areas. The wall dominates the image, with the roadrunner seemingly powerless and small in the frame.
So they're not really being coy about this being a statement. The Petapixel article also has longer quotes from the artist about how disruptive he feels the border wall is for wildlife. I don't think it's a statement about immigration politics, per se, as much as a statement about unintended consequences of the way our actions affect the environment.
A lot of notable and iconic photographs are political.
Unless we took it down. We got along without for a damn long time, and the reasons to put it up in the first place always turned out to be entirely made up and contrary to well-established fact. Is observation of stupidly, massively overpriced construction that has, objectively, no desirable result, but is massively disruptive for wildlife, political?
Only through an implicitly political lens.
“Freedom of emigration is due to the general interests of humanity. The course of emigrations being always, from places where living is more difficult, to places where it is less difficult, the happiness of the emigrant is promoted by the change: and as a more numerous progeny is another effect of the same cause, human life is at once made a greater blessing, and more individuals are created to partake of it.” — James Madison
And, chances are, these two presidents were probably talking about white immigrants, given the racism and slavery of the time. Are you familiar with James Madison’s policies with Native Americans? He privately thought they couldn’t be civilized and wanted white immigrants to eventually mix with and displace them into irrelevance.
I suppose that there are also folks who don't realize which group they're in.
Now, someone is going to ... quote said couplet and leave it at that. So:
First, Lazarus's bad poetry was added to the base of the Statue of Liberty 20 years after the statue itself, as a fundraising effort.
Second, poetry (regardless of quality) does not policy nor law make.
Third, in any case, every single person who came through Ellis Island
* was a legal immigrant
* had passed a medical inspection
* had proof of having enough resources to pay for their upkeep in the US, or a US financial sponsor guaranteeing same
* was turned away if failing any of the above tests, with no possibility of appeal
I, for one, am very much in favor of reinstating such barriers to entering the US.
PS - One more thing: Every single person who came through Ellis Island was coming to a country with an enormous demand for unskilled labor. This is no longer true.
I'm all for brain-draining other countries but ... (IIUC, Australia and New Zealand are very selective along those lines.)
It is still very true.
Though personally I was holding out for seeing the roadrunner amongst some orcs on ladders climbing up helm's deep.