Friday, October 07, 2011

The White Tiger

Tiger, tiger, sapped of might
Trapped in lights of neon white
What immoral wish or whim
Could cage your noble soul within?

I shot this photo while visiting Las Vegas in 2004. The strip is a monument of tragic magnificence. Opulent but impoverished. It's seductive; you can't help but marvel at the tremendous scale of the engineering, the marketing, the dream that's being sold...that you too can live in a gold and marble tower, your every wish fulfilled, nothing to do but feast on luxury.

The tiger looked sad, and on impulse I took a photo, and by doing so I became an accomplice, no better than any other gawking tourist.

1 comment:

  1. Not fully an accomplice: you presented it not as an attraction to be marvelled at but rather to highlight its situation.

    It's this sort of thing that makes the anti-zoo folks happy, so you've got that.

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