Enrique Metinides

To me, this photo by Enrique Metinides invokes a feeling of anxiety - not from the wrecked bus itself, but from all the people standing around watching the scene. Although the focal point is the bus, the wide composition suggests the surroundings are just as important, and I believe they are. We see a hoard of bystanders watching this scene, but in truth there isn't a whole lot depicted. The bus is already wrecked, there doesn't seem to be anyone injured around, there's no fire or flaming wreckage, so it poses the question, why is everyone still so engrossed by this? I believe this photo could be about society's obsession with violence and tragedy. As previously noted, there isn't anything grand catastrophe going on here, yet the image of a wrecked bus incites the idea that something horrible could happen, and the crowd here doesn't want to miss that.

This photo is a part of Metinides's collection, 101 Tragedies. However, I don't think the tragedy here is the bus itself. I think the real tragedy is how society reacts to said "tragedies."

This photo is also a part of Metinides's 101 Tragedies, but offers a different reaction. Here we have a hotel, collapsed and destroyed by a fire, evoking a very somber mood. But what really shows the meaning is the sole man walking along, barely even recognizing the great destruction that has just occurred. Here, instead of showing society's overreaction and obsession to tragedy, we see society's ingrained normalization of tragedy. This photo makes me think of how greatly desensitized people in general are to violence and gore. For this man, it could just be another day, another building, and I think that's the case in many parts of the world. But we also see tragedy so much on a daily basis, whether it is movies, television, video games, books, even photographs - we see it all to the point that when it happens in real life, it's nothing we haven't seen before.