The Week in Pictures Analysis

Link to Photograph: https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/2020-year-in-pictures/index.html

**Dana Clark wears a safety pod as she waits in line to vote with her 18-month-old son, Mason, as early voting began for the presidential election in New Orleans on Oct. 16. (Kathleen Flynn / Reuters)**

To pick just one photograph from all the incredible images I saw on NBC’s The Week In Pictures, is quite difficult. In fact going through all of these images, made me remember what an impact they can have. I guess in many ways social media has desensitized me to the power of photos. Maybe, it’s because most of the images I see on there are just selfies of my friends. They are meant to portray happiness, and are just overall superficial. They don’t even touch the surface level of who they truly are. They don’t provoke any emotions within me, which now that I think of it.. that makes me a little sad. It’s almost as if the photographs we take are watered down versions of the human experience.

Yet, when I look at that photo of a black mother, Dana Clark with her son Mason I feel everything I felt watching the Black Lives Matter Protests, all over again. I am reminded of how society has failed Black people not just in the United States but all over the world. I feel the resentment towards colonization, towards white supremacy, towards police officers, towards society. I know that woman had to go out to vote during the pandemic not just to “exercise her right”, but she did it for her son’s future. His life, and hers is reliant on who runs the country.

I can relate to that to an extent, as a Latina who isn’t fully white. It’s painful to see your right to live constantly debated, by these privileged strangers who somehow are supposed to represent “you”.

This image is compelling for many reasons. It shows a mother who is clearly distressed. She’s wearing a mask that says “I can’t breathe”, George Floyd’s words. She is holding her baby in her arms. There is a lot of emotion being conveyed with this image. It reflects trauma. The fresh trauma of COVID, the political trauma of having an openly racist leader, and the generational trauma of racism in the United States. It’s a lot not take in.

Even though this image is a reminder of how our country isn’t the Land of the Free for all it also highlights something truly beautiful which is a Mother’s Love. That love is what perseveres through any circumstance.