Howdy!

While I was at the Eaton Centre the other day I wandered up to the top floor and came across an exhibit of children’s pictures.

On the flip side were portraits of (what I presume are) the children who did the drawings.

And dispersed around were some wall panels that explained things.

And this is where my gums start flapping and I get a little bit agitated (it’s ok, I’ve had my blood pressure tested recently, and it’s ok). Ostensibly this is an exhibit of children’s self-portraits from around the world. And in going through it, it appeared that most of the children were from some pretty poor places. Or more bluntly there weren’t any pictures by middle-class children.

Which got me wondering how much money each of the children got for participating in the project, and how much money Gilles Porte got to travel the world to gather the self-portraits by disadvantaged youth around the world and then print them in a large scale format.

Heck it got me thinking how this must be one of the more effective uses of money by the Quebec government to raise awareness of the basic rights of children around the world, because there was not a single person on the entire floor while I went around taking photos.

And since they were trumpeting how the exhibit had been to 20 other French cities as well, I wondered if they had placed it in other places that got little to no traffic.

And then the thing that really got my bile flowing was this juxtaposition:

Now I realize you can’t really make out the portrait of Penda too easily, but see that Gap ad right next to it? Now please explain the difference between the two to me (other than the fact that they are of two very different children).

So as far as I can tell (please someone tell me that I’m wrong) the Quebec government spent good money on an photo exhibit in a mall that is being seen by no one and that is for the most part indistinguishable from advertisements.

I’d love to know who signed off on that one.