Your Turn: America '08 - Reading The Pictures

Monica Almeida/The New York Times. caption: A wedding in West Hollywood CA in June after the state’s highest court legalized same-sex marriage. Five months later, voters approved an amendment to the State Constitution that bans the marriage.

image 2: Stephanie Sinclair/VII Network, for The New York Times. caption: In July, members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints played outside their home in New Braunfels, Tex., three months after the breakaway Mormon sect’s ranch in Eldorado, Tex., was raided by the state authorities)

The NYT 2008 Year In Pictures collection has eleven non-campaign photos representing “The Nation.” Four offer natural disasters. Two are memorial pictures (one 9/11 related, the other featuring an Iraq war veteran). There is one scandal shot, of Rod Blagojevich.

The other three could be characterized as “launch” pictures. One showcases a space shuttle take-off. The other two, presented back-to-back in the slide show — juxtapose a lesbian wedding in West Hollywood (invalidated several months later by Prop 8) with female members of a Texas Mormon sect arrested for polygamy, jumping up and down on a trampoline.

As snapshots framing the year, I’m wondering what you see the pictures saying, if anything, about gay rights, women, tolerance, religion, California, Texas and/or the cultural in general.

NYT Year In Pictures

(image 1: Monica Almeida/The New York Times. caption: A wedding in West Hollywood CA in June after the state’s highest court legalized same-sex marriage. Five months later, voters approved an amendment to the State Constitution that bans the marriage. image 2: Stephanie Sinclair/VII Network, for The New York Times. caption: In July, members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints played outside their home in New Braunfels, Tex., three months after the breakaway Mormon sect’s ranch in Eldorado, Tex., was raided by the state authorities)