Remembering Flower Power

During the Tea Party rallies, there were so many signs that proved a high degree of anger. However, if one needed to capture this information, it is necessary to pause the scenes that pass in a quick manner. It was

Robin Jenkins effectively conveys loss of innocence and ant war through sophisticated symbolism in the short story “Flowers”. It tells the story of a young girl, Margaret, who was evacuated from the city of Glasgow to the highlands of Scotland in an attempt to avoid the inhumanity of war, but it is in the highlands where she truly witnessed the brutality of war.

In “Ways of Seeing”, John Berger, an English art critic, argues that images are important for the present-day by saying, “No other kind of relic or text from the past can offer such direct testimony about the world which surrounded other people at other times. In this respect images are more precise and richer literature” (10). John Berger allowed others to see the true meaning behind certain art pieces in “Ways of Seeing”. Images and art show what people experienced in the past allowing others to see for themselves rather than be told how an event occurred. There are two images that represent the above claim, Arnold Eagle and David Robbins’ photo of a little boy in New York City, and Dorothea Lange’s image of a migratory family from Texas; both were taken during the Great Depression.

For this essay the works of Robert Draper, author of “Why Photos Matter,” and Fred Ritchen, author of “Photography Changes the Way News is Reported,” will be analyzed. Though both deal with the topic of photography, their take on the matter is very different. While Ritchen is a photographer who writes on “what professional photographers will be doing in the future,” Draper is a writer for the National Geographic writing on how the photographers of the magazine share “a hunger for the unknown.” Both writers, however, write on the topic of photographers having a deeper understanding of their subjects, Ritchen due to research and practice, and Draper because the photographers “sit [with] their subjects, just listening to them.” In both essays the need for a deeper understanding of the

“The Flowers” by Alice Walker is a short story written in the 1970’s. The story focuses on Myop, a ten year old African American girl who loves to explore the land in which she lives. Carefree and naïve, Myop decides to travel further away from her ‘Sharecropper cabin’ and travels deep inside the woods to unfamiliar land where she discovers the decomposed body of an African American man. It is then Myop quickly grows up and suddenly becomes aware of the world in which she lives. The story relies on setting and symbolism to convey the theme of departing innocence.

This photograph, taken in 1967 in the heart of the Vietnam War Protests, depicts different ideologies about how problems can be solved. In the picture, which narrowly missed winning the Pulitzer Prize, a teen is seen poking carnations into the barrels of guns held by members of the US National Guard. This moment, captured by photographer Bernie Boston symbolizes the flower power movement. Flower power is a phrase that referred to the hippie notion of “make love not war”, and the idea that love and nonviolence, such as the growing of flowers, was a better way to heal the world than continued focus on capitalism and wars. The photograph can be analyzed through the elements of image as defined by ‘The Little Brown Handbook’ on page 86. There

Originally published in 1975, Nora Ephron’s essay “The Boston Photographs” is both still relevant and controversial almost forty years later. It deals with the series of three photographs that were published in newspapers across the country. The most important one shows a mother and child falling off a collapsed fire escape. Both have their limbs outstretched. If both had survived, maybe the reaction would have been different. The child survived by landing miraculously on the mother, but the mother ended up dying. The question on everyone’s mind was why the photographer, Stanley Forman, decided to take the photographs instead of trying to help the falling

While Postman points out the literal meaning of photography is “writing with light”; the two are from completely different universes when it comes to public discourse (p. 71). Unlike typography, photography cannot offer assertions, make propositions and offers no commentary. As long as it is not an altered photograph, it has no choice but to be true (p. 73). Thus, the photograph is only able to capture a moment in time and does not have the ability to comment on that moment. Our author contends, where language presents the world as an idea, the photographs only option is to show the world as an object (p. 72). Whereas in language, the correct context requires consideration of what is said before and after, in photography there is no before and after, only the snapshot of time. Therefore, by its very nature photography is context-free (p. 73). As photography immersed itself in the American culture author, Daniel Boorstin called this “the graphic revolution.” Postman is unequivocal on the point that the traditional forms of information, news, and even reality itself received an impairment by this new focus on images. For examples, he cites billboards, posters and advertisements. He points to magazines Life, Look and several newspapers. The picture was the focal point, and the writing was forced to take a less dominate roll and sometimes done away with altogether (p.

War had broken lose in Vietnam, and many Americans left to serve their country. Back home, people were protesting war. Anti- war activists attended Woodstock, and protested the war. Large numbers of these groups started to appear, and mass protests began. This caused an uproar. Although there were many anti war protests, not everyone agreed. Threats were made, targeted towards the hippies, stating “I will shoot the first long hair to show up.”

While the protester is being sprayed in the eyes with mace, the music festival goer is smiling and a person is posting a photo of her with tags such as #stylish #coachella etc. This piece truly reflects the treatment of Native Americans: How people are so quick to use a person’s culture to their advantage, how people use others but don’t really care for them. “Thus the art will endure, both as a testimony to and a reminder of the protesters’ courageous fight” (“The Art of the Standing Rock”).

When hear the name Merry Pranksters what comes to your mind? Let me guess a group of young individuals dressed in a joker costume running around throwing water balloons from roof tops or shaking hands with strangers to taze them. Merry Pranksters were not exactly known for doing that, but they were group of young adults who did pranks with LSD. For instance, they mixed LSD in a bowl of Kool-Aid in their parties to get their guests high and this was known as Electric Kool-Aid Test. “In the 1960s, heroes of the counterculture -- Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, the Beatles and the Grateful Dead -- embraced the practice of dropping acid, viewing it as a great way to party and as the path to a higher consciousness” (Ross). At the same time, in the sixties violence was prevalent from Vietnam War, to protesters rebelling against the government and U.S. was at a brink of starting World War 3 with the Soviet Union. As a result, this made the American people pessimistic about their future, so they began to take LSD and drugs. We can see things in today’s culture that were partially inspired by the Merry Pranksters, such as using LSD in order to be connect with the self, two distinct groups of LSD users and the revival of psychedelic movement.

Before starting this project, I knew very little about photography, photographers, or exactly how much impact photographical images have had on our society. I have never taken a photography class, or researched too in depth about specific pictures or photographers. This project has allowed me to delve deeper into the world of photography in order to understand just how much influence pictures can have over society’s beliefs, emotions, and understandings’. I have have chosen two highly influential photographers, Diane Arbus and Dorothea Lange, who I have found to both resonate with me and perfectly capture human emotions in way that moves others.

This photo emphasizes the importance of silent protest and the power of gesture, political climates experience incredible shifts with movements such as these.

The violent markings of the photo album and its images, however, produce an equally powerful message that jars the memory as it disrupts and distorts the photographic chronicle of her life and that of her family and friends. The result is a complex visual experience that addresses the use of images in producing knowledge and making history.

Set against the backdrop of World War II and its aftermath, the episode examines how photographers dealt with dramatic and tragic events like D-Day, the Holocaust and Hiroshima, and the questions their often extraordinary pictures raise about history as seen