It was 1984, and photographer Steve McCurry was walking through a refugee camp on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, taking photographs of refugees that had fled from the war. The refugee camp was a sea of tents; he walked through them, approaching a school tent. Inside the school tent he noticed a girl with incredibly bright blue and green eyes. Sensing her shyness, he waited to approach her, photographing other students first. The girl told him he could take her picture. “I didn’t think the photograph of the girl would be different from anything else I shot that day,” he recalls. Little did McCurry know, that photo would become the defining image of his career, and one of the most famous National Geographic covers ever published. The photo was titled “The Afghan Girl” and has been called "the First World's Third World Mona Lisa". Her name was Sharbat Gula, which means "Sweetwater flower girl" in Pashtu, the …show more content…
He would receive letters, emails and phone calls every day, from people wanting to know more about the girl in the renowned photograph. McCurry and a team of experts flew to Pakistan in January of 2002, to head back to the refugee camp where he photographed her all those years ago. They showed the picture around, and a teacher claimed to know her name, and a young woman named Ali Bimbi was located in a nearby village, but after meeting with her, McCurry and his team used iris recognition software and came to the conclusion it wasn’t the same girl he photographed all those years ago. A man came forward, who said he also knew ‘The Afghan Girl’; he claimed to have lived in the same refugee camp as her when they were children. He believed she had returned to Afghanistan years ago, he said, and now lived in the mountains near Tora Bora. The man went to get her, and three days later they arrived. Steve McCurry said when he saw her walk into the room, he knew it was
Our history books continue to present our country's story in conventional patriotic terms. America being settled by courageous, white colonists who tamed a wilderness and the savages in it. With very few exceptions our society depicts these people who actually first discovered America and without whose help the colonists would not have survived, as immoral, despicable savages who needed to be removed by killing and shipping out of the country into slavery. In her book, The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity, Jill Lepore tells us there was another side to the story of King Philip’s War. She goes beyond the actual effects of the war to discuss how language, literacy, and privilege have had lasting effects on the legacy that followed it.
"Mir Tamim Ansary - Afghan American Author and Lecturer." Mir Tamim Ansary Afghan American Author and Lecturer. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Dec. 2013.
David W. Blight's book Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory and the American Civil War, is an intriguing look back into the Civil War era which is very heavily studied but misunderstood according to Blight. Blight focuses on how memory shapes history Blight feels, while the Civil War accomplished it goal of abolishing slavery, it fell short of its ultimate potential to pave the way for equality. Blight attempts to prove that the Civil War does little to bring equality to blacks. This book is a composite of twelve essays which are spilt into three parts. The Preludes describe blacks during the era before the Civil War and their struggle to over come slavery and describes the causes, course and consequences of the war. Problems in Civil War memory describes black history and deals with how during and after the war Americans seemed to forget the true meaning of the war which was race. And the postludes describes some for the leaders of black society and how they are attempting to keep the memory and the real meaning of the Civil War alive and explains the purpose of studying historical memory.
As a socialistic society we live in we find ourselves in positions were conflicts arise between friends or family. 'The Sniper'; was written by Liam O ' Flaherty to express a subtle yet powerful opinion on such a conflict. With references this essay will analyse the short story bringing to light the structure used to contribute to the theme.
In "Our Secret" by Susan Griffin, the essay uses fragments throughout the essay to symbolize all the topics and people that are involved. The fragments in the essay tie together insides and outsides, human nature, everything affected by past, secrets, cause and effect, and development with the content. These subjects and the fragments are also similar with her life stories and her interviewees that all go together. The author also uses her own memories mixed in with what she heard from the interviewees. Her recollection of her memory is not fully told, but with missing parts and added feelings. Her interviewee's words are told to her and brought to the paper with added information. She tells throughout the book about these recollections.
Flannery O'Conner has again provided her audience a carefully woven tale with fascinating and intricate characters. "The Displaced Person" introduces the reader to some interesting characters who experience major life changes in front of the reader's eyes. The reader ventures into the minds of two of the more complex characters in "The Displaced Person," Mrs. McIntyre and Mrs. Shortley, and discovers an unwillingness to adapt to change. Furthermore, the intricate details of their characters are revealed throughout the story. Through these details, the reader can see that both Mrs. McIntyre and Mrs. Shortley suffer from a lack of spiritual dimension that hinders them as they face some of life's harsher realities. Mrs. McIntyre struggles throughout the story, most notably during the tragic conclusion. Her lack of spiritual dimension is revealed slowly until we ultimately see how her life is devastated because of it. Mrs. Shortley, on the other hand, seems to have it all figured out spiritually -- or at least she believes that she does. It is only in the last few minutes of her life that she realizes all she has convinced herself of is wrong.
Perhaps no other event in modern history has left us so perplexed and dumbfounded than the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, an entire population was simply robbed of their existence. In “Our Secret,” Susan Griffin tries to explain what could possibly lead an individual to execute such inhumane acts to a large group of people. She delves into Heinrich Himmler’s life and investigates all the events leading up to him joining the Nazi party. In“Panopticism,” Michel Foucault argues that modern society has been shaped by disciplinary mechanisms deriving from the plague as well as Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, a structure with a tower in the middle meant for surveillance. Susan Griffin tries to explain what happened in Germany through Himmler’s childhood while Foucault better explains these events by describing how society as a whole operates.
...her and the more modern case of Brian Walski demonstrates the importance of ethics in the mass media. With the public dependent on photographers for images that will give an accurate and true representation of the facts, in some cases even leading to such important decisions as giving relief aid, waging war, or determining votes in an election, it is vitally important that journalistic images be true and unaltered likenesses of real persons and events. Even apparently innocent misrepresentations, designed to create a better image or better prove a point, can have serious consequences for the photographer, the subjects of the image, and the public. It is a reminder of the importance of honesty in all professions.
Even though Tina Modotti is considered a Mexican photographer because her artistic career was mostly based in Mexico and the American Southwest, she was born in Undine, Italy in 1896. She moved to California in 1913 and was employed in various labor-intensive factory jobs. She was first known mainly because of her relationship with photographer Edward Weston, for whom she was a model in the 1920s; but her abstract, portrait, and still-life photographs “showed her to be an accomplished photographer in her own right” (encyclopedia).
Life is an ongoing process of learning and growing through challenges and experiences. It is mentioned by Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American poet, that “unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.” Emerson contributes to the idea that change is inevitable and it is key to one’s personal development (Lipovetsky, 2012). Well, such is an essence in the film “The Blind Side” when the protagonist, Michael Oher, changes and grow through adversities, which eventually shaped him into the man he is today. Oher, also known as Big Mike, is a 16 year old African American teenage boy. Oher was one of the twelve children living in a broken extremely impoverished home in the ghettos of Memphis surrounded by drugs.
After a basketball game, four kids, Andrew Jackson, Tyrone Mills, Robert Washington and B.J. Carson, celebrate a win by going out drinking and driving. Andrew lost control of his car and crashed into a retaining wall on I-75. Andy, Tyrone, and B.J. escaped from the four-door Chevy right after the accident. Teen basketball star and Hazelwood high team captain was sitting in the passenger's side with his feet on the dashboard. When the crash happened, his feet went through the windshield and he was unable to escape. The gas tank then exploded and burned Robbie to death while the three unharmed kids tried to save him.
The picture book Ziba Came on a Boat is an emotional and touching story, based on fictional events, and personal experiences, which evoke incredible empathy towards Afghan refugees. The author, Liz Lofthouse, makes tribute to those who have inspired the book, by writing
She focuses on snapshots of a person’s daily life. hooks discusses the significance of these snapshots in the time of post-segregation; when negative stereotypes of African-Americans were rampant. For black people, these snapshots allowed others to see that in reality, black and white people were not all that different. Snapshots allow people to “look at ourselves with new eyes…create oppositional standards of evaluation” and now “[black people] saw [themselves] represented in these images not as caricatures, cartoon like figures; [they] were there in full diversity of body, being, and expression, multidimensional” (hooks, 61). hooks believed that the snapshots broke down the mental barriers between black people and white people in the minds of white people. What the whites learned through the images was that although they believed that the blacks were almost subhuman, in reality, they were no different from them. They both did normal, human activities such as playing games, loving their family, or celebrating. Tsarnaev’s selfie classifies as a snapshot, which is unusual for a magazine cover. Most magazine covers are professionally done photos that are edited and photoshopped to look flawless however the image of Tsarnaev is raw and taken with a cellphone camera. A selfie is more raw and candid than a
In the novel Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, the protagonist, Christopher McCandless, displays isolation and independence almost to the point of narcissism but it was not until he set out on his journey into the wild that those closest to him realized the true height of his individualism. In McCandless’s eyes, people in his society have forgotten about the value in the pursuit of personal knowledge, the chase of individual happiness, and the existence without materialistic objects. On his journey, McCandless takes drastic measures to uncover, find and discover who he is and what he is capable of, isolating himself physically and mentally, driven by the idea that society urges men to conform.
Khaled Hosseini was born in March 4th, 1965 in Kabul, Afghanistan and he is an Afghan-American novelist. He debuted in the year 2003 and released his book called “The Kite Runner”. The book opened to widespread critical acclaim and strong commercial success worldwide. And for this kind of novel he received Alex Award, Boeke Prize, ALA Notable Book and a lot of other prestigious awards. He has then authored several other books in his career. There was no turning back for Khaled Hosseini after his first breakthrough because he yet again produced a masterpiece in 2007 with the book “A Thousand Splendid Suns”. The book has been his most decent and productive authorship for which he received plenty of awards and international popularity in the world. His third and final notable work is «And the Mountains Echoed», which has received generally positive reviews from critics and readers. Khaled Hosseini is regarded as the most important American author of this time. He has been praised for his excellent writing skills in writing novels. He is very good in writing women’s issues and rights in Afghanistan.