18

Late in the 2011 Vancouver Stanley Cup riot, these two lads contemplate life. They make me think of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The scraped knees of Rosencrantz are my favourite part of the photo. If you look closely, you can see a trickle of blood running down each of his shins.

A simple but strong composition based on the tipped dumpster and its shadow illustrates the ebb of the riot. The police are elsewhere, clearing another block, perhaps after having already cleared this one. This photograph doesn't say any more than that they aren't here now and people are mingling in a relaxed way.

Actually, the photo says nothing about the police at all and very little about the riot other than that a crowd of young Canucks fans had gathered late one night at Robson and Howe around a dumpster that had somehow found its way onto its side in the middle of the street. Parsing a photograph is a lot like cross-examining an eyewitness in court. The testimony of both is fraught with assumption and in need of corroboration.

I like the contrast of scale between the dumpster and the water bottle below it.

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