A Protester in Homs, Syria by Florian Göttke On October 3 rd , 2011, I open my morning paper and look down onto a street in Homs, Syria, directly into the eyes of a protester. I look at him; he looks at me. His face is covered by a mask, but I can clearly see his eyes behind it. Our gazes meet, piercing through all of the intermediate layers of the media, in what feels like a live encounter. He looks at me with expectation: he poses a question; he makes a demand. (1) (1) This sense, that we looked each other in the eye, that we became aware of each other’s presence and recognised each other’s existence is what Roland Barthes would have called the “punctum” of the photo – the force of which struck me at that moment. Now, the closer I look at this image, the less sure I am that his eyes are actually visible. Still I keep having the feeling that he is looking at me – maybe even more so because I can’t precisely determine the position of his eyes. The mask covering his face reminds me of a Mexican wrestler’s mask — tightly fitted, transforming the face into one smooth surface. It seems to be handcrafted from a keffiyeh, a scarf symbolically linked to the Palestinian resistance, and that, in recent years, has also become a fashion item. The mask is as revealing as it is concealing; it hides the protester’s identity, but not his individuality. The sign he holds up to the camera is not a standard protest sign; it looks like a red velvet pillow in the shape of a heart, taken right off of his parent’s living room couch. It is emblazoned with a single word in Arabic: “freedom”. Love is his message and freedom his demand. (2) (2) I spoke with a Syrian artist and learned that, at that time in shops across Syria, people had to show their ID to buy fabric and paint – the standard items necessary for making protest banners. To avoid police scrutiny, protesters in Syria creatively used other means: individually crafted protest signs scaled down from public square to camera-ready size, slogans written on the palm of hands, symbols painted on faces, cartoons drawn on pieces of paper – and the most unexpected protest sign: a red velvet cushion. I imagine it coming from a kitschy living room with a big overstuffed couch and countless pillows on it, the heart-shaped one being the most eye- catching and thus the most appropriate to adapt for the protest. It is quite impossible to determine from the photograph how the word was applied to the cushion. The letters could have been embroidered, painted on, stitched on, or glued to the pillow. The protester is wearing a sky-blue tracksuit top and black pants. His sex is not easily determined. His somewhat rounded hips suggest he might be a woman, but this could be a distortion resulting from the camera perspective, and in the Arab-Middle Eastern context his short haircut makes it much more likely that he is a man. In his left hand, he is holding what might be a bag. The rest of the