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| Mankayane, Swaziland, quite some time ago |
What about this photo might illustrate "opposites"? Is it that the two people are different genders? Different ethnicities? Different cultures? Different religions? Wearing different styles of dress?
Art is always open to interpretation, and the main goal of creating art is to provoke thought.
So: is the idea to represent the two subjects as opposite genders? Which would presuppose that gender is exclusive, either one or the other. But humans don't necessarily fall at all neatly into two opposite genders, according to any definition, whether biological, physical, cognitive, behavioural.
Now to what degree are the subjects different ethnicities: their skin colour certainly differs, but racial and ethnic identification is a whole lot more nuanced than that. Are they really opposite ethnically?
Consider the idea of different cultures - possibly at first glance that's a seemingly logical assumption, but we don't know where these two grew up, what occupations they currently hold, what aspects of lifestyle and perspective and family and friends they share in common - or not. They're walking across the same town center, a shopping plaza - perhaps both with a similar list of errands; groceries for dinner, stop at the post office, etc. How opposite culturally can they really be?
Different religions - might surmise so based on appearances, but then again, we have no idea to what beliefs they hold true. Unlikely to be opposite in any deep sense.
On to dress - yes, they do look quite different. However, they are both wearing traditional clothing of long-standing origin.
And then there's the simple fact that both subjects are facing away, in the opposite direction, from the photographer.
