Self Portrait and Photo

Self Portrait:

Photo:

The contrast of power and weakness in this photo is interesting, but the boy's calm is what draws me in. Why is he so calm in the face of something that could hurt him so easily? I feel like this photograph is a metaphor for an understanding of life and a premonition of the confidence and peace of overcoming fear. The balance is struck on a compositional level as well as metaphorical; the boy's skin color and size balances that of the bull, as if to allude to the metaphor. Their mutual nakedness seems to be the only thing that these beings have in common. It seems to put them in a single category, together, as if to eliminate any sense of hierarchy that the size contrast might otherwise impose.