Quick Change.

 This very morning it’s quiet in the streets of Kiev. President Victor Yanukovych is nowhere to be found, the police have disappeared and the protest leaders are in control. The dramatic images of Independence Square http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/ukraine-whats-happening-and-how-will-it-end-9139199.html (scroll down) have a look of apocalypse about them. I knew seventy or so protesters were killed, the police used live rounds etc but I wasn’t prepared to see an apocalypse. I’m struck by incredibly limited vision of news cameras. Like our own eyes only having a small circle of actual acute vision news photographers are always looking for the best shot to ‘show’ the story, at least the news story they’re focused on. So in a sense the momentum of the news story dictates the focus of their lens. It’s likely in Kiev just a few streets away from Independence Square life, or at least the look of it, is quite normal. What the protesters have created in that square, consciously or not, is a film set for the media. Black smoke from burning tyres smudges the buildings, central monument and protesters into a homogenous acrid grime and makes the clean police uniforms look even more alien and sinister. Somehow like a boy coming in from football covered in mud the look belies the simplicity of a bath to put things right. How this situation will evolve I’ve no idea but I find it interesting that you only need to create the look of devastation the width of a wide-angle lens to tell a story, a story that the media will flock to and that might to even make a president flea. Whatever our technology or status all of us are narrow vision-ed emotional beings: show us the pictures and we will create the narrative.