Entry 69: Magic Pictures

The first picture on page 356 features a group of children peeping curiously at a bird sculpture standing in a doorway. The building is gray and old. There are some graffiti on the aged walls. The bird sculpture is a ostrich made out of wood or plastic. Its front is exposed while the rear is hidden behind the unopened door. The children look at it as though it is alive. The magic-realistic part of this picture is that it is set in a realistic, street-corner view, but the bird sculpture is portrayed as being animate. I think this picture is trying to depict the way the villagers reacts to the old man with wings. The people in the story and the children in the picture all stare and having fun with the strange object (man with wings/ bird sculpture). Maybe the bird sculpture in the photograph symbolizes how a "stranger" is like an object to others rather than an alive being.
On page 361, the third picture has a landscape with rocky mountains. Sitting on the tallest rock is a sculpted moon with a human face. The sky is blue and shows that it is day, not night. What is ironic is that we see a moon during daylight, the moon is not in the sky, and most of all, it's not real after all. The photograph however contains realistic elements - its setting. Just like magic realism writings, they usually start in a realistic situation and environment. After that, things get weirder and weirder.