Love at the barricades

I was really struck and haunted this week by a moving image by Viktor Drachev from AFP/Getty Images showing a young couple in front of the barricades in Kiev, Ukraine.  The image evokes the story of Eponine and Marius in Victor Hugo Les Miserables, or more specifically the musical by that name.  I really think that the image speaks for itself on so many levels.  It could just as easily be from the 1848 Paris Insurrection as  today’s Ukrainian Protests.  And for that it is a highly successful photograph.