Ordinary Citizens by Dan Bohane based on the David King Book

See http://www.danbohane.co.uk/video.html for more videos.A series of drawings and paintings of the faces of victims of Stalin's terror. These faces are based on photographs taken while these people were being interrogated by the secret police and are the last record of these people. I first saw these pictures in a Sunday Times article by David King a few years ago. David King has subsequently written a book, Ordinary Citizens, that details how these people were arrested under trumped up charges ,hearsay and falsified evidence. Interestingly some secret police themselves became victims.See if you can spot the military men.

I first painted these pictures in 2002/2003 when I was down on my luck and staying in a friends spare room. I found it therapeutic to paint these faces. Funnily enough the linking together into a video came at another difficult time when I was resigning from a much loathed job . However the suffering of these people must be hard to imagine compared to ours today in Britain.

I make the characters smile in the painted section, this was to just to try to add extra humanity to these grim faces. After all they must have smiled lots in their lives before these harrowing mug shots were taken.


The animation morphs the drawings and paintings together and is set to an original sound track that I wrote and recorded, called 'A theme on Gorecki. And is similar in style to that composer.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• animation
• music
• education
• history
• art
• drawing
• painting
• morphing

[singleton559]

I remember you at the kitchen table dan :) I remember the rough drafts and then the final product..... Ben still moans that you nicked one of his brushes! Much love Mr Bohane x

[danbohane]

@singleton559 hello hello , A friend of Ben. Who could it be ???? I have lots of brushes now. I can post Ben a brush. where too though..............Kitchen table...??? hmmm Is it Oz maybe or Mr Verall ??

[danbohane]

@singleton559 -Is it Claire by any chance ?

[TheNataliaRR]

My colleague, who is from Iraq, was joking from black albinoses in google and he got ban from google images in his mobile phone...

[danbohane]

thanks jordan.see you at guitar club

[thefritz123]

Very well made and very moving meditation on the Terror of Power & Violence. Thanks

[DarkAngelV]

it's cool video XD

[alilxbittaxdis]

that's a great dedication work you have here.  great job!

[danbohane]

used a program called fantamorph. this is not a flash video.try google fantamorph for free try out program.

[pvzci2]

how do you do morphing in flash? Can you just give me some tips..