The image of six U.S. Marines raising the American flag on Iwo Jima is one of the earlier photographs the film shows. The photo depicts the battle-worn soldiers raising the flag in the wreckage of the battle. Joe Rosenthal took this photo in 1945. He took it five days after the Marines landed on Iwo Jima. This image has become iconic in the United States. Multiple statues and memorials have been created in its honor.
Raising the flag at Iwo Jima.
Lee Harvey Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby in 1963 as he was being led out of the Dallas police headquarters. Photographer Robert Jackson somehow managed to capture the exact moment when Oswald was shot. Jackson had set up 10-feet from the door that Oswald was going to exit. As Oswald came through the door, someone stepped in front of Jackson. “My first reaction was, ‘This guy’s getting in my way.’ Ruby took steps and fired, and I guess I fired about the same time.”
Black Lives Matter protests popped up in many major cities this past summer. Some of these protests resulted in altercations with less progressive movements. Stanley Forman’s 1976 photograph, “The Soiling of Old Glory,” made a reappearance. The photo depicts a white teenager assaulting a black man with a flagpole during an anti-bussing protest. The contrast between the two–a white, long-haired teenager, bearing a scowl on his face, and a black man who is a well-dressed lawyer who has been knocked back into the crowd by the attacker–is so visceral. When viewing the photo, you can feel the hate coming from the teenager. The concerned look of the crowd indicates that the assault is horrendous. Forman’s photograph compared to this summer’s clashes between protesters shows that while we have come a long way for equality in this country, we still have a lot of work to do.
In 1984, Stan Grossfeld went to Ethiopia to cover the famine. Civil war had left most of the country starved. Grossfeld took a picture of a mother and child waiting in line for food. The mother and child are nothing more than skin and bones. The child succumbed to starvation hours after the photo was taken. Grossfeld struggled documenting this tragedy. “You try to be a technician and look through the viewfinder; sometimes the viewfinder fills up with tears.”
In 1996, a young girl fell into the raging floodwaters of Matanzas Creek. Firefighters struggled to rescue her. Photographer Annie Wells was standing on the shore of the creek. Wells snapped a picture of a firefighter clinging to a branch while attempting to rescue the girl. The creek looks as if it is attempting to consume the girl as she holds onto her rescuer. Thankfully, she was pulled to safety by the brave firefighter.
This is the responsibility of a photojournalist. To shine a light on the good and the bad. To hold up a mirror to our society so that we can see what is truly going on in this crazy world. These men and women want to make you feel what others around the world are feeling. Carol Guzy knows the importance that empathy plays in taking a photograph. “Someone once told me that empathy was not imagining how you would feel in a particular situation, but actually feeling what the other person is feeling.”
