Norbert Baska is the man in question, and his shoot ‘Der Migrant’ has gone down like the horrifically inappropriate lead balloon it is.
Needless to say the internet has not been impressed.
Baska meanwhile, committed to his concept, has taken to his own website to defend the images.
A statement from the photographer reads:
The shooting is not intended to glamourize this clearly bad situation, but rather, as said above, to draw the attention to the problem and make people think about it. Artists around the world regularly attract the public’s attention to current problems through ‘shocking’ installations and pictures. This is another example of such art.
To people who said I am stupid, I can only say they should examine the problem from different angles, all the more that they do not live in Hungary, so they do not experience it first hand. It is very difficult to understand from the news coverage whether these people are indeed refugees or something else.”
Good art is meant to stir up emotions in those that view it, but this is on a different level.
It isn’t even a question of being ‘too soon’, there just isn’t a universe where genuine human suffering can appropriately combine as a theme to showcase pretty clothes and models.
