We Are Not All Created Equal, Alas


I saw this photograph by August Sander a couple of weeks ago.  I mean, right away, it hits you in the face. Some people point a camera at a couple of kids and you get faces so anonymous it’s like you’re not even looking at anyone.

But Sander shoots a couple of kids and we get this.  I stare and stare and stare. Talent feels like magic to me sometimes. How do they do that??

I am so happy Kris is in the final two. (American Idol. It’s a tv thing.)  I remember at the beginning of the season he was such a mystery.  He hadn’t been introduced to us in the audition process, not that I could remember anyway, and he seemed so light weight.  But it turns out he was smoldering and subtle.

Tonight we rehearse the Missa Solemnis with the orchestra.  We’ll go all the way inside of Beethoven’s head for the first time.  We’ll hear everything he heard, and be completely enveloped by whatever he was feeling.  

It will be like a musical seance, and the once living breathing heart of Beethoven will come back to life and speak to us again, through the choir and the orchestra, his mediums.

Stacy Horn

I've written six non-fiction books, the most recent is Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York.

View all posts by Stacy Horn →

2 thoughts on “We Are Not All Created Equal, Alas

  1. Sander. August Sander, no “s” at the end. You and I always like the same documentary photographers!

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