-hndrk-
Hands up
A collection of modern target posters, that’s the first weirdness here. My limited knowledge of target posters made me assume they were all silhouettes or bulls eyes. But no, apparently the internet offers a wide selection, you can shop around for your favourite type of villain.
“Shane” the 1953 Alan Ladd Western is the story of a buckskin clan gunslinger who rides into a small town, becomes drawn into the conflict between homesteaders and the cattle baron, stands up to the bad guys and in a final gunfight kills them before he rides away wounded and maybe dying, into the distant mountains. There’s more to it than that, of course, and if you’ve never seen it, then some rainy Sunday you should find time. But I mention it because back in technicolor 1953 Shane’s outfit was white(ish) and the villain’s was black. This wasn’t the first time that the black clothes had symbolized evil, it was probably an easy code in the early days of cinema, and looking at these target practice posters I wonder if all the models are wearing black. What about the leather jacket and the Tee shirt. When did they become de rigueur clobber for badguys? Was it Brando in “The Wild One” (also 1953), a film about motorcycle gangs in small town America? Watch that one once you’ve finished Shane and ponder what small town life was actually like in 1953 USA.
The three men in Hendrick’s picture are all dressed in black, the two on the target posters are probably actors, or models, or friends of a photographer, but they are designed to look like bad guys and so I prefer the guy taking pictures… but what if he was wearing his dark glasses?
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, Rachel Irving and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
