Positive or Negative?

The first picture I chose for this blog is a newspaper cutting from 1974, the year President Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency of the United States following the Watergate Scandal. I chose this as a negative image, because of his abuse of power during the time period he was President. The political scandal began with the breaking and entering into the Watergate Office Complex in Washington, and following that, Nixon was involved in suspicious activity involving bugging his own office to overhead people's conversations. It was discovered that the burglars had been paid to commit their crimes, with payments coming from the Presidency. I don't think this image can be seen as positive in any way, as when Nixon was elected President of the United States in 1969, the public put faith and trust in him, however by decieving both many of Congress and the people of America, and jeopardising his political reputation, they lost all faith in him. He become, to all intensive purposes, a criminal. In his own words, he was no longer acting in the interest of the public, and had betrayed Congress which he very much needed to remain President. This abuse of power must have resulted in a total loss of faith for America, therefore this image has incredibly negative connotations.

This photo, taken on August 28th 1963, is of Martin Luther King; leader of the Civil Rights Movement in America and is, I believe, an incredibly positive image. This iconic 'I Have A Dream' speech made at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, was monumental looking back at the history of America. It is quite a peaceful image, reflecting King's peaceful protest ways, and the stance he has is as if he is reaching out to the people he's talking to, trying to welcome them in and accept what he is saying. It is a calming image, as if it had been taken ten years prior, it is likely that a black man would not be standing on a platform like this, talking to thousands of people. What I liked about this photo is that you can really see the progress King made within Civil Rights, looking at the faces in the crowd, everybody is focused on him, and the photographer to his right is a white man; again something which would have been extremely rare ten years before. The iconic American flag to his right symbolises unity, which was incredibly important as that is what he was trying to convey to the American people, peaceful unity of both blacks and whites. Another iconic thing about this photo is it is in black and white, as it is an understated way of saying what the photo is all about. I don't think many negative links can be made with this photo, as it is a very peaceful photo, King is open to the crowd and seems to be engaging with them, something which needed to happen for the Civil Rights Movement to move further forward with it's progress.