A Tale Of Four Images

Khalid Wad Albaih, August 18, 2016.

The trouble with imagery sharing a compositional resemblance is that most of the time we cannot establish, whether it may have been mental laziness on the copyist's part or that they are sharing their time and age and are as such each of them part of the larger picture.

It may be that the artist was taking up the inspiration found from another, which makes it proof how inspirational the first image turned out to be. The artist next in line was waiting for the right moment to make his or her own version. 

In the present case this is a story of four images so far.

The first two ones centered on the situation of Syrian children. All too painfully known photos on the little drowned Aylan Kurdi and Omran Daqneesh taken to an ambulance from beneath the rubbles of Aleppo following Russian air strikes. 

Khalid Albaih each time created his version within the first hours of their photos being published, stripping the children of the scenery in which they were photographed as if stark cut-outs and placing them on a stark luminous background by which he created a direct confrontation with the beholder. A situation needs to be changed and responsibility must be placed. 

Omran confronting Putin proved not as popular as the one of the two children. The press, ever terrified of not appearing neutral - Ahem! - emphasizes the one below, which in turn went viral. This is the one, whose own artist worries every time he sees it in social media feeds, knowing there will be new, horrific news. It has taken on a life of its own:

Khalid Wad Albaih, August 18, 2016.

This week Time Magazine published this cover on Trump made to face his own doings, separating children and toddlers from their parents at the borders, without till now even securing a minimum of organization to make it possible for the parents to have their children back: 

@time: #welcometoamerica, June 21, 2018.
http://time.com/5317522/donald-trump-border-cover/

Trump never face responsibilities of any kind; let us be honest, so Khalid Albaih responded to the cover by adding another layer to it. By the time the cover was published, Melania Trump had boarded a flight to Texas with THAT jacket with the impossible-to-overlook all capital lettering I REALLY DON'T CARE, DO U?

But not just that. Military personnel have been added to keep the child from even being seen. The total ignorance of the scene. The uniformed are mere shadows of human life.

Khalid has added the danger, of which the girl is the visualization, just like Omran and Aylan.

The little girl is exposing the autocracy already at play in the official US. This is The Land of the Unfree.

Khalid Albaih, End of Times, June 23, 2018.

Khalid Albaih publishes his khartoons under a Creative Commons license.