Until the other day I thought this photograph, the so-called ‘Leap into Freedom’, was the criterion for liberty, no less. A cursory Google search (the snap came up in some morbid conversation about David Hasselhoff’s ‘Looking for Freedom’) says otherwise. The power of images is propaganda above all, the human story often discarded. It appears Schumann was the prisoner of *our* image, and reading about his life post-1961 – depression, solace in alcohol, his eventual suicide in 1998 – one can’t help but feel for the guy.
That primary life-changing decision with all its what-ifs, and he had to be reminded of it daily, us lot ascribing meaning to the photograph that wasn’t there, like we’ve owned his experience.
20 years later.
I suppose the contemporary equivalent is becoming a meme and spending your life trying to supersede it.
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/the-leap-of-hope-that-ended-in-despair-1167101.html
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/conrad-schumann-defects-west-berlin-1961/
http://100photos.time.com/photos/peter-leibing-leap-into-freedon
https://www.buzzfeed.com/audreyworboys/famous-people-from-memes-then-now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDPG4zTdm-w
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 