Photo And Feelings example essay topic

I chose the Vietnam Veterans Memorial photo because of the intense emotional feeling it gives me when looking at it. The mood provoked is a mood of sadness and mourning. There are so many features that emphasise sadness and pain and I think the way the photographer took the photograph makes them all evident. The first thing that catches your eye is the man facing the wall.

He is quite a dominant feature because the background is fairly plain so immediately the emphasis is put on him. His posture and his face buried in his hands suggest he is upset. Put that together with the fact that the wall he is looking at is a memorial wall for all those that died in the Vietnamese War and you could extend his upset stance to a tearful memory of a friend or family member that was a casualty. He has warm clothes on which means it must be cold and coldness is generally a miserable condition. This adds to the feeling of uneasiness. The large amount of names on the wall tells us of the severity of the war.

The way that they seem to just blend into each other makes it seem like there are a large number of them too. The black marble wall and neat white letters make me think of a funeral. The trees in the background seem dead too even though it is probably just winter and they have lost their leaves. They give off a feeling of emptiness, death and discomfort. This could be related to the emotions or feelings that the man is going through. Where I come from, trees like these often adorn cemeteries and definitely don't make the experiance easier to handle.

There is only one bouquet of flowers at the foot of the wall. The man has probably 2 brought these as a traditional sign of respect and mourning to the person whom he has come to remember. There only being one bouquet of flowers leads me to thinking that the other people on the wall have been forgotten; a painful thought. The photographer positions himself perfectly to allow the light to reflect a mirror image of the man and the pathway.

The man too is positioned well so as to be in the middle of the pathway with the monumental structure in line with the pathway. The light reflects off the shiny surface and gives almost a mirror image. The reflection could suggest that the deceased have moved on to other pathways and the reflection of the man could be interpreted as a piece of himself that was lost with the loved one and is now gone forever. Because the image is only a reflection, he can do nothing to get his friend or loved one back.

This gives a feeling of hopelessness and can be seen as a not-so-hidden message. You can not see the reflection of the mans face which makes the photo and feelings represented in the photo, universal. The photo, being only black and white, adds to the lifelessness or negative emotion the photo excludes. Color would give the photo more of a happy or joyful presence and so it is best that it is left in black and white.

Another factor that influences the appearance of the photo is the time of day it was taken. I gathered that it was take in the late afternoon judging by the long shadow casted by the man. Dusk means that it is heading into night with all its darkness and now I pity the man as night could bring about the feeling of insecurity. The photographer took a spontaneous and simple picture of a real life situation and brought across the feelings being felt by the man. The photo emphasises the severity of war and the indirect consequences it has on people.