The Big Question

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Saturday, September 03, 2005

Forty-seventh Question


It has been said many times that "a picture is worth a 1,000 words". What is your favorite photograph (personal or famous)? Please describe it and what it "says" or means to you.

posted by Sublime @ 12:07 PM  

12 Comments:

  • At 12:17 PM, Blogger Sublime said…

    The picture I included with this question is one of my all time favorites. It is by photographer Diane Arbus and titled, "Child with a toy hand grenade". I have a very large picture of this photograph hanging in my living room. It was taken in 1962 during the Vietnam War and to me it conveys the raw emotion and anguish that people were feeling at the time, all wrapped up in the expression of a child playing with toy grenades. For some reason it just speaks to me...

     

  • At 4:33 PM, Blogger Asaph's Table said…

    It's not a "favorite," but the photo that has most impacted my life was the famous "Time" photo of the naked Veitnamese girl screaming as she ran from her village, which was just napalmed by US troops. It reminds me of the cruelty, as well as the frailty, of man, and of our need to treat others with dignity and respect.

     

  • At 5:38 PM, Blogger SassyFemme said…

    I have too many that I love to pick just one favorite. They all boil down to the same theme of me as a happy child, or my family.

     

  • At 9:04 AM, Blogger Valerie said…

    Wow. This is a hard question. I teach photojournalism so I look at a lot of pictures. I think my favorite would have to be "Migrant Mother" taken by Dorothea Lange. She and Henri Cartier-Bresson are probably my favorite photographers.

    Sublime: Diane Arbus is wonderful. Last year there was an exhibit about her life and her work at the Museum of Fine Arts-Houston. It was great.

     

  • At 9:19 AM, Blogger I n g e r said…

    Ditto what Valerie said. Migrant Mother's absolutely one of my favorites; the look in the mother's eyes, the vulnerable back of the neck of one of her children, the canvas tent. Though it's not about the immigrant experience, really, to me it always encapsulates that: grim determination and overwhelming despair.

     

  • At 5:48 PM, Blogger nancy =) said…

    my favorite personal photo is of my children when they were 4 and 1...they are at the park and my daughter is giving her little brother a kiss and he had a really adorable expression on his face...another one that touches my heart is the one where the fireman is carrying the little baby girl in his arms from the oklahoma bombing...and the last photos of john lennon with yoko ono that were shot by annie liebowitz earlier the same day that he was murdered - or maybe the same week, i can't remember exactly...all of photography is special to me...both my husband and my daughter shoot incredible photos and we have a darkroom in our home...

     

  • At 12:12 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    The most memorable photo that I can think of would be with my brother & I standing next to my dad in the kitchen at my grandmothers. I love the photo. I would have been about 10 and my brother 7.

     

  • At 1:04 AM, Blogger And the Past Recedes... said…

    A picture of my sons, they are jumping on the bed, and they didn't know the pic was being taken. It's an awesome pic--to see them in action, having so much fun. The smile and laughter on their faces, melts me.

     

  • At 10:27 AM, Blogger sttropezbutler said…

    In this moment I see the photo of a young child, 5 years old, holding the hand of a woman in a wheel chair said to be 100 years old...being pushed by a man who helped to rescue them from the the nightmare called New Orleans.

    STB

     

  • At 6:49 PM, Blogger nancy =) said…

    stb i saw that picture, too...amazing, it was...

     

  • At 8:40 PM, Blogger Dr. Deb said…

    I have to say my "favorite" photo is a old fuzzy shot of my sisters and I lined up sitting in the snow. It reminds me not only of our youth but of the innocence that graced those years.

    There are two photos that have impacted my life. One is "Firefighters at Ground Zero, September 11, 2001", where three firefighters are raising the American flag, and the other is "Buchenwald, 1945" in Life Magazine. Both of these photos illustrate what hatred can do.

     

  • At 12:44 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I can't help but think of an older (1940s?) photograph of a Black cleaning woman posed, mop in hand, in front of an American flag. The stoicism in her face, that she was going to do for herself and her family and try to get what she could out of a society where she has to struggle to get even basic respect because of her skin color.

     

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