Fight for What's Right - Poster

Fight for What's Right

The climate of the world we live in today doesn't allow for activism to flourish the way it should. Those who fight onwards, to reach their goals, make the world a better place, are ostracized, beaten down, and are made to believe that what they want, the very thing everybody should want -- Peace, is impossible to achieve. Despite this, there are dedicated people who make sure that no matter how harsh the going gets, they will never stop fighting. Ever. I am inspired by those who put their lives on the line to support a cause, and while I've never been in their shoes, this intervention is, for now, a metaphorical toe dip into protest/activist art.

An Invisible Hand by The Water

When I first introduced myself in this course, I made it clear that film was something I enjoyed analyzing for the sake of discovering activist messages. Photography is no different, and as one can tell, I wanted my piece, titled Fight for What's Right, to bask in the sun on campus. The Black Lives Matter symbol of the raised fist was my immediate thought, the iconography gripping me since I first saw it, and given the opportunity to express myself visually, the plague of racism was the cause I knew I had to cover in this assignment.

Leafy Display

John Berger's talk on images and how we react to them was another inspiration behind why I chose to do the piece the way I did. The formation of four fists, one invisible, with the implication that someone may put their fist there. The piece is interactive, and while I have no images of anyone making use of that, it is an image I'd like to capture one day. John Berger said in his book, Ways of Seeing, that "One may remember or forget these messages but briefly one takes them in, and for a moment they stimulate the imagination by way of either memory or expectation."(129)

A Piece in The Sun

The Black Lives Matter imagery is something that we will continue to see for years to come, and one that I will continue to support as that time blows ahead. The photography aspect of it is one that media loves to use in news reports or online reports, depending on where someone looks. In a recent reading of Signs of Resistance, we saw further how visuals can apply to the world as we know it. In 1955, Emmett Till was murdered, and the Civil Rights Movement started. In Signs, Siegler writes "The anger and outrage over Emmett Till's murder was one of the catalysts that sparked the Civil Rights Movement. And it was all because of a photo."(60)

I will continue to fight for what's right because my skillset allows me to do it in a specific way, one that others may not be able to. This is something I love to see in signage at protests, a personal, handmade production that is meant to show that the pen and paper can really make a difference... This how I fight, and others will continue to fight until the end of time.