It always amazes me how differently we can all interpret images. What is beautiful to one person is sometimes offensive to others.
Yesterday I shot the photo above of my god son running through a field of flags in the central quad at the University of the South. We were driving over to his dad's office when we stopped to check out the flags. We did a quick estimate and realised it was a field planted to commemorate the victims of 9/11/01. After we counted my god son began walking, then running down the rows between flags and I made a photo of him being a child in a beautiful, peaceful place on a lovely crisp September day.
For me this picture is about hope. I will always be afraid of a beautiful day the second week in September. That particular quality of light will always make me sad, it will always remind me of 9/11/01. But it won't be that way for my god son. For him a beautiful September day can just be a beautiful September day. That thought fills me with hope.
Here is what I posted on the NatGeo instagram feed
My god son runs through the 9/11 memorial in Sewanee, TN. Photo by @salvarezphoto (Stephen Alvarez). He asked me what the flags were for so I said to remember the people who died 11 years ago in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. But how do explain 911 to someone who was not alive when it happened? Watching my god son run through those flags gave me hope that his generation would not be scarred in the way that ours is.
Most people understood what I meant by the image and the words. A significant minority did not. Run through the early comments and you'll find people who find it disrespectful and upsetting. It is always shocking to me when someone significantly misreads a photo. However, I guess it is no different than someone significantly misreading a story or a poem, it happens all the time.
Stephen Alvarez
@salvarezphoto on Instagram
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