Reading the Pictures: Best Posts of 2016

Enjoy our best posts of 2016….

January

MLK: March 25, 1965
Photo: AP
What makes the MLK photo seem so immediate and contemporary is how much it feels like a selfie. For a news photo, it’s unusually intimate even now.

February

On that Startling Flint Photo of 3 African-American Kids Toting Water

Photo: Wayne Lawrence
Showing kids who could, if not for the skin color, be coming home to Park Avenue from private schools brings home how universal the need for water is.

Watch the Reading the Pictures Salon: A Look at Early Campaign ’16
Through the early primaries, Campaign ‘16 has been one of the strangest presidential races ever. Our expert salon panel analyzes key photos of the process.

March

The Brussels Attack: Between Two Cell Phone Photos of the Same Scene
Photo:Ketevan Kardava—Georgian Public Broadcaster/AP
What stood out from Monday’s terror attack in Brussels is how two slightly different cell phone photos became defining images of the event.

April

K.C. McGinnis: Thank You Jesus For Lord President Trump

Photo: Jae C. Hong/Associated Press
To observe the true disconnect between Trump and evangelicals, illustrations are not hard to find.

April

Christa Olson-Abortion and Breastfeeding: Both Part of the Ordinary Life of Ordinary Women

Photo: Alice Proujansky
Reviewing these photographs while feeding my own newborn, I am reminded that reproductive rights are a crucial part of women balancing work and family.

May

Steve McCurry’s Rickshaw
Photo: Steve McCurry
If Steve McCurry’s aesthetic and the doctoring to achieve it deserves the criticism, I’m wondering what is positive and worthy for us to learn from it.

July

Baton Rouge: Channeling the Fire with Amazing Grace

Photo: Ruddy Roye
Mindful of the smoldering racial and political atmosphere in the country right now, the photo’s symbolism reaches beyond a single instance of goodwill.

August

On that Crazy Pete Souza Obama VR Shot
Photo:Pete Souza
If, a few years ago, someone told us this picture celebrated the centennial anniversary of the National Park Service…. mind blown!
 

August

Christa Olson-The Visual Politics of Empty Shelves 
Photo: Meridith Kohut / New York Times
Photographs of bare stores and starving families fit too neatly into “us and them,” imagining whole political systems as economically and morally bankrupt.

August

Nancy Burson’s What If Trump Were: Black-Asian-Hispanic-Middle Eastern-Indian

This animated GIF was created by artist Nancy Burson to consider how Donald Trump’s mind works and to stir reflection from the mogul’s malignant soul.

September

What’s Not Deplorable About “Deplorable Lives Matter”

Photo: Deplorable AJ  via USA Today 
OK, Trump supporters are sporting the deplorable phrase out of spite. But, what about the truth underlying all defensive gestures?

October

News Photos of Police Protests: More Profiling of Black Males
Photo: Logan Cyrus/Charlotte Magazine
What we’re seeing in these photo galleries is a replay of the stereotype associating young black men with criminal and savages.

October

Haiti, Matthew and the Limits of Attention

Photo: Andrew McConnell—Panos
What makes one event the intense focus of “name photojournalists” and visual media while others are largely ignored?

October

On Trump, the Rally Mob and the Terrorizing of Journalists
Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Trump’s blaming and bullying actually causes us to fear for the safety of the writers and photographers covering the last days of this pyrrhic campaign.

 

November

Trump’s Office Shrine: The Magazine Table, FOX Interview & Self-Obsession
The segment of the FOX Trump interview proves so telling, it could be mistaken for a behavioral experiment.

December

Reading the Pictures Salon — How Science is Pictured in the Media and Public Culture: A Joint Reading the Pictures/Seeing Science (UMBC) Salon
Photo: Daniel Stier
This joint Reading the Pictures/Seeing Science/UMBC Salon is interested in science as a social agenda and how science images are being portrayed in visual culture.