Kim Jong-il (C) participates in the 12th top People's Assembly at the Mansudae assembly hall in Pyongyang April 9, 2009, in this picture released by the country's official news agency KCNA on Thursday.
Either it's just a coincidence or the North Korean government is remarkably prescient with their official photography. Many of the pictures they release of Kim Jong-Il bear echoes of the work of contemporary photographers and artists ranging from Martin Parr and Alex Webb to Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth.
Unfortunately I couldn't find a larger j-peg of the image above which appeared in the New York Times newspaper (but not the website) last week. But here's a detail, below. Please e-mail a larger file of the full frame above to info@danzigerprojects.com if you have one.
Some other echoes:
Alex Webb:
A Martin Parr book:
Early Thomas Struth:
Gerhard Richter or any number of contemporary Chinese painters:
