Arts: Fit to Be Tied: Holiday Parade Balloons in Bondage

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Behold Fit to Be Tied: Holiday Parade Balloons in Bondage By Alyssa Coppelman Posted Wednesday, Nov 21, 2012, at 02:30 PM ET Behold is Slate's brand-new photo blog. Like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter @beholdphotos and Tumblr. Learn what this space is all about here. As America gears up for the world-famous Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the perspective of photographer Frank Hallam Day offers a darker and more unusual view of those perennially cheerful oversized cartoons. For four years, he captured photographing balloons the night before various parades for a series he calls Blown Up. Already inflated with helium and ready to float through city streets, the balloons were by necessity pinned down in nets, giant prey to tiny predators who couldn't otherwise capture them. The bug-eyed looks on some of their faces evoke captivity, bondage, or even torture. Via email, Day says, "I'm not really interested in the specifics of what/who the balloons depict. … I like the ambiguity of identity, of scale, of location, and of time. The creepiness comes in, I think, with the multi-stage recontextualization that's going on here. ... we are supposed to recognize the balloons as warm, cheerful characters on screens, as real personae to children. But these gigantic things lying late at night in the street are chillingly corpulent, wrinkly things ... neither warm nor cheerful. Horrifying, in need of an oxygen mask and surgery, perhaps. … Maybe they look magical, floating up in the air the next morning; I wouldn't know ... I'm always sleeping in." The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade began featuring balloons in 1927, as ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate The Purple Prose of Cairo Don't Worry About the Voting Rights Act What Do Anonymous and MTV Have in Common?	Advertisement
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