Red Square, Moscow, 1965

This photo of Moscow’s Red Square was taken by Inge Morath in 1965. It struck me for several reasons – first, in most photos one sees of the area, St. Basil’s Cathedral is the focal point of the image. While the lines of this photograph initially seem to draw the viewers’ eyes towards the towers, my eye is constantly darting back to the small child in the white (or light-colored) hat in the bottom left corner of the image. She is the only person in the photograph who is facing the camera, and the brightness of her hat contrasts sharply against the dark color of the overcoats around her. It took me a moment to realize that she is not part of just a small cluster of people at the corner of the photograph – she is standing in a line that wraps all the way around the vast expanse of Red Square. There is no information in the photo caption about the purpose of the line, but given that this is the 1960s in the USSR, imagining that it is a bread line or something similar is not out of the question. Judging from the overcoats, hats, and dusting of snow on the ground, it was cold out when this picture was taken, and it’s difficult to imagine this many people queueing up if not out of necessity – even to visit Lenin’s Tomb. They do not seem to be watching a speech or participating in any activity other than waiting in an impossibly long line in the cold – while 1965 would have been the 20^th anniversary of Victory Day, the picture does not have a celebratory mood and the weather looks too cold for early May, even in Moscow. I’m now very curious about the actual nature of the line in the photograph, and wish there was more information in the caption!