1) name of photograph and/or photographer (if available), 2) brief description of photograph i.e., subject/context, and 3) what you will argue this photograph's political, historical, social and/or cultural impact has been.
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The photograph that I have chosen to write about was taken by Eric Sucar of the Daily Messenger and the Associated Press and was taken on March 2, 2006. The photograph features autistic basketball manager Jason McElwain lifted on the shoulders of his teammates and classmates after scoring 20 points in the final game of the season for his high school basketball team. The politcal power that this photograph portrays is how the government has made it possible for people with disabilities to excel in the world. Through programs and laws such as the American Disabilities Act these people have become involved in society. Historically, the people who have excelled in athletics have been the most talented, the biggest, the strongest, and so on, this shows that you don’t need all these traits to excel in athletics. In fact, the development of Special Olympics show how we have changed historically in relation to disable people. From a cultural standpoint this photograph shows how we have begun to embrace people with disabilites. Finally, the social impact of this photograph relates to overcoming the disadvantage that they’ve been dealt. Also, with the embracing of Jason in our society his life has taken a turn for the good. He’s done talk show circuits to movies and more, basically showing how our society has embrace those with disabilities.
The photograph that I have chosen depicts an unknown man standing in front of a column of tanks near in an attempt to stop the tank from advancing near the Tienanmen Square. The photograph was taken on June 5,1985 by Jeff Widener for the Associated Press from the sixth floor of the Beijing Hotel, about half a mile away, through a 400mm lens. The photograph was of historical significance. On June 5, 1989, one day after the Chinese government's crackdown on the protesters, the man stood on Chang an Avenue awaiting the approach of the tanks. The front tank tried to go around him but the student did not let that happen by stepping into the path of that tank. This photograph symbolized non-violent protests, and informed the entire world of the oppression of the Chinese government on the Chinese people. It also disclosed the wrongfulness of the Chinese government's authoritarianism.
I am writing my research paper on a photograph by David J. Phillip that depicts the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Although New Orleans and several other surrounding cities were destroyed by the hurricane, most importantly, lives were destroyed. The photograph depicts a family standing on the roof of their house trying to escape the rising water. They are waving American flags, and they wrote on the roof in white chalk the word "help" as well as "the water is rising, please!" Their arms are raised high in the air as if begging in desperation. The photographer must have been in a helicopter, and instead of helping them he simply took a photograph for news coverage. I plan to cover the social, political, and cultural effects of this photograph including the way in which African Americans were treated as less than human and less than American during this time of need from their so called fellow Americans.
I have chosen a photograph of the 1980 USA Olympic hockey team right after the beat the Russians in the semifinal round. This picture was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated. The photograph really captures the "moment" of this huge defeat by Team USA. The look on the faces of the players really tells how the felt and how much of an upset the won was. At the time of the Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, the Russian had just invaded Afghanistan so the world was being torn apart. For just a bunch of American college hockey players to beat a team of professional Russian hockey players was such an inspirational and huge moment, especially in relation to what was going on in the world at that time. One of the greatest thing about this photograph is that someone in the stands is waving an American in the background. It really shows the patriotism and faith the citizens had in our team to achieve what was thought to be nearly impossible.
My photograph captures babies playing on the roof of a FEBEM (foundation for Child Welfare) center in the Pacaembu district in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1996. Approximately 430 children live there, thirty-five percent of whom were abandoned on the streets, the others were delivered to the center by parents no longer able to care for the. The photograph was taken by Sebastiao Salgado for Amazonas Images. I am going to use this photo to discuss the animal instincts of humans, portrayed in how the babies crawling on the roof look like animals rather than humans, and relate that to, what evolutionary biology refers to as, the “selfish gene.” Essentially, this theory explains that all types of behaviors that humans participate in are motivated by the soul biological purpose of passing their genetic information on to the next generation, without a real desire to raise the offspring produced by such motivations. Recently, in the United States, the Safe Haven Law was enacted to protect parents who feel that they can no longer take care of their children. The result, however, has been parents who no longer wish to care for their children have been abandoning their children, claiming protection under the Safe Haven Laws.
I am deciding between three different photos at this point. All three are from the Columbine High School Shootings that took place on April 20, 1999 in Littleton, Colorado. The three portray very different aspects of the shooting. The first photo is one of the photos that we saw in class. It is a photo taken from a video camera in the high school cafeteria and it depicts Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold fully armed walking in the forefront of the photo with a background of a cafeteria that appears to be deserted. The photo is grainy and black and white, granted it is the best quality that could be produced from the camera, but nonetheless the viewer gets the message. This shot is one of the few images of the shooters in Columbine that day and at least for me as a viewer I get chills looking at it. So I can use that photograph and talk about the image of the shooters and that photo in general or I can use the other two photos.
The next photo is one taken from KUSA's helicopter on April, 20 1999 and the image is of eleven people escaping Columbine through a broken window along with what appears to be two officers and at the bottom of the stairs depicted lies the body of Daniel Rohrbough. Even from the helicopter the fear of the individuals escaping cannot be missed in their language. This photo is another option.
The last photo I am still deciding on is also from April 20, 1999 and it is off Patrick Ireland, one of the victims though he was not killed, being evacuated through a window from the library by two swat team members. I can expand on any of these photos to analyze and they are the three most recognizable from the shooting.
The photograph i have chosen is "the corpse of Che Geuvara" by freddy Alborta. The picture is of Che Geuvara's body after he had been killed Bolivian officials. In this picture Che Geuvara still looks alive and is looking out almost in a peaceful gaze. This picture is very much associated with the Argentinean revolution and the continuation of it after Geuvara's death. This picture is also very allegorical and the way it is depicted looks a lot like the portrait of christ after he was murdered by the romans. This picture has had a huge political, historical and social effect on the people of argentina and his revolutionary ideals. It allows Geuvara to live on past his death and to continue to inspire a revolution that he started and fueled.
I am doing a series of three photographs by Harry A. Trask that depict the
sinking of the S.S. Andrea Doria, an Italian luxury liner, on July 26,
1956. The ship sank 53 miles off the coast of Nantucket after colliding
with a Swedish liner. Trask won the Pulitzer Prize for photography for his
breathtaking photographs taken minutes before the ship became fully
submerged. Historically, these photographs serve as a reminder of the
tragic event and all those who lost their lives as a result of the
collision. Even today, these photographs impact culture as exploration of
the wreckage is considered to be the Mt. Everest of diving due to the
dangers that await divers that dare to seek out the treasures once
possessed by the passengers of the Italian luxury liner.
The photo I have chosen is a photo of the Tsunami in Western Indonesia. It
was taken by the Associated Press. This photo has many important details
and says much about how big the affect of the Tsunami had on the people in
Western Indonesia. It shows several dead bodies being observed by some of
their fellow countrymen who stand in shock and disgust at the fact that
these people were killed from a Tsunami. This Tsunami will have a very
obvious effect on the political aspect, because now the politicians must
present an idea to resolve the damages that this bad weather has cost the
people. This has historical importance, because this is one of the most
devastating natural disasters in the history of the world. This weather
was unseen and committed damages that nobody thought was possible.
Although people thought that the storm would be bad, nobody expected the
results to be this devastating. Lastly this will have a cultural impact
because now the people will have to restart their lives because they have
lost everything including food, clothes and shelter. Some of these people
probably possessed things that their ancestors had and passed them down,
now those things are gone and either damaged.
The photo graph that I am going to write about is Timothy O’Sullivans’ A Harvest of Death. There is controversy already about this picture, for two famous civil war photographers are credited for this famous photograph. Also credited is Matthew Brady. This is a photo taken during the civil war in Gettysburg, PA in 1863. This photo shows hundreds of dead soldiers from both the Union and the Confederacy. The dead bodies are being picked up by horses from each side, retrieving their dead. Photographs of the dead like those taken at Gettysburg have come to dominate the modern memory of the Civil War so thoroughly that, in the words of one recent scholar, “to think of the Civil War at all is for many Americans to recall A Harvest of Death, with its limp corpses flung across a misty field. This photo changed the social perspective of the Civil War; the civil war was the first war to be photographed. The photos that were published in newspapers told and informed Americans, both northerners and southerners, of the true bloodshed that was occurring in America. Timothy O’Sullivan was notorious for changing the positioning of the dead bodies to provoke a response from whomever he was taking the picture for, whether it be the Union or the Confederacy. The importance of this picture lies less in whether or not they are real and more in the reality they construct, as a collective visual memory. Civil War photographs appeared everywhere at the turn of the century, between 30 and 50 years after the war, there was a nostalgic boom. A huge market arose for soldiers memoirs, novels, and histories of the war, and entire ‘vernacular culture’ developed around war nostalgia, including plays, novels, magazine stories, and serials as well as public rituals surrounding Decoration Day, July 4th, soldiers’ reunions, and battle anniversaries.
Th Pulitzer prize winner of 1945 Joe Rosenthal took the photograph of the men on Iwo Jima raising the American Flag. The photograph is actually called the Iwo Jima Flag Raising. The photograph depicts six marines on the top of Mt. Suribachi struggling to put up an American flag after their 3-4 day fight to climb to the top and thus capturing the mountain. The historical power that this photograph holds is very profound because of its use in its ability to rally the American people once more in order to finish the war in Japan. It brought about a huge patriotic surge that allowed the US to stay in the fight in Japan and brought about the end of the war. The significance of Iwo Jima itself is also a profound victory because it is considered part of Japan and it allowed the allied forces to be able to drop the two atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima later on in the war.
The photograph I have chosen to write about depicts a portion of the estimated one million mourners of Chairman Mao a few days after his death in 1976. The picture portrays the respect and love of the Chinese people for the charismatic leader. A death of one person has never affected a country so much as Mao's. He is credited with the Cultural Revolution that took place in China that has allowed the Chinese economy to thrive. I will look in depth at the social aspect of the picture, not least because of Mao's cult following but because of his impressive rule, and notably controversial ideologies and actions.
The photograph I have chosen was taken by Seattle Times in Sri Lanka right after the Tsunami incident which took place on December 26th, 2004. The Tsunami was considered as one of the most devastating natural disasters in history. The Tsunami had a directly destructive impact on the islands of Sri Lanka and the Maldives along with the coasts bordering Indonesia, India and Thailand. The incident took away 300 000 lives and displaced more than million people. The plight of the many affected people and nations prompted humanitarian response from all over the world.
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