The myth I chose was about Daedalus and Icarus, his son. As a recap, what happened in the myth was that Daedalus and Icarus were prisoners of war, and they wanted to get out. So Daedalus made wings for himself and his son, and puts Icarus' together with wax, warning him not to fly too close to the sun, as the wax will melt and his wings will fall apart. Icarus didn't heed his father's advice, and he falls from the sky into the ocean.
Hearing this, I didn't want to do something obvious to depict it, so I decided use the symbolic nature of the myth to my advantage. What I got from it was that Icarus took a risk and flew too close to the sun, fully knowing the implications of his actions. Because we were supposed to modernize the myth, I connected this to our time instead of recreating the myth itself. My connection was made to the war in Iraq. The belief I have is that the invasion was unnecessary, causing an appalling loss of life that could have been easily avoided if the United States' leaders simply decided, or cared enough, to stop it. In my photo, I intentionally did not use any particular person's face, as I decided for the model to represent U.S. and foreign society as a whole. I used blood on the hands to symbolize the lives lost in the war; the fact that the hands are crumpling up the American flag could show many things. First of all, it could be a representation of the world's distaste with our country's approval of such an unjustified war. Another possible symbol I thought about was the bloodshed (represented by the hands) encompassing the United States (the flag). This shows that instead of the reputation as a kind, charitable, and generous country, the first thing people think of when they hear about the U.S. is the nature of our bad decisions.
