Flags

I was making my way to a rally at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights Sunday afternoon, which was marking the 4th anniversary since Russia’s invasion against Ukraine. I’m not Ukrainian but this cause means something to me for many reasons.
En route, I spotted another rally making its way downtown, and could spot the (pre-revolutionary) flag of Iran held aloft by the participants.
I guess the part of my brain formatted by a few decades of newspaper work is still firing, somehow, and I made a mental note to swing around on my way back. Photographers sometimes joke about the ‘photo gods’ smiling on them, and for a change they sent some luck my way — I managed to get a photograph I thought had some substance to it outside the Museum (below) and managed to catch up to the Iranian rally immediately afterwards. They were kind enough to grant me permission to photograph their rally, happy to have someone share their efforts.

It never fails to impress upon me how much luck plays into the creation of a photograph. In this case, a bright winter sun shining lots of hard direct light upon these two separate (but still connected) rallies. In choosing to backlight the flags, I hoped to make the image more about the cause than the individuals portrayed. Flags have always been symbols and in both cases the symbolism is linked across very different cultures and peoples. Despite these differences, both represent people fighting (and dying) to reach for a better, freer life.