In mid-August of 2015, Ferguson, MO went through one of the most testing inter-community struggles that any city in America has endured in modern American history. The outbreak was generated from the recent racial tensions emerging in America at this time, specifically between the African American community and the nation’s law-enforcement.  With America’s slavery history, still looming in the not so distant past, America possesses a well-documented history of racial tension among its citizens. The unjust death of African American Michael Brown by a Ferguson policemen created outrage in the Ferguson community. With the recent developments and dramatic of the improvements made in the internet industry of the nation’s news medium has begun to make a home on the web.  The advancements in internet and technology, provides an outlet that allows ordinary people to report news.  This new form of ordinary people generating news for the masses takes the power of deciding what is news and what is not out of the hands of the National media and into the hands of the people.  The new medium of social media allows the turmoil of a small American town to become National news in the matter of minutes. When determining what is news is in the hands of the people, the people are going to take advantage of this and the people of Missouri took the Michael Brown incident and (with the help of social media) turned it into a cultural movement that took America by storm.  The racial tensions in Ferguson reached a breaking point during the week of August 12. 2014, citizens of Ferguson turned their struggles into action, thousands took to the streets in and participated in riots that were formed by the oppression the African American community felt that they were experiencing.  Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone placed himself directly in the heart of this turmoil land produced a piece filled with images from the week eventful week in Ferguson that captures the true emotion and state of the Ferguson community in a way that a basic news article consisting of just words would not be able to illustrate.  

The picture used as the cover photo for Dickinson’s Rolling stone piece depicts an African American man with his arms outstretched, his head down, and his eye’s closed. (Dickinson 1)  The image is uncanny to that of perhaps the most influential religious figure of modern time, Jesus Christ.  Jesus on the cross is universally held as a symbol of suffering. The man in the picture is wearing a St Louis Blues hat, Missouri’s hockey team, by wearing this particular hat the man goes further than just representing the African American community, he represents the St. Louis and Ferguson community as a whole.  This image uses the universal symbol of Jesus Christ on a cross to portray the suffering of the African American in Ferguson, and perhaps even in America.  Jesus is also used as a symbol of innocence; the author of the photo-essay is using the cover photo of the article to take his stance as one in favor of the people of Ferguson.  The image is taken in a very bright light, one that almost seems surreal. Both these characteristics can correlate with the image representing Jesus, the brightness and dreamlike qualities in the image are both traits that are closely related with heaven and religion.  The unreal quality that the picture possesses represents the true state of strangeness that Ferguson was experiencing at the time, the place where day to day life is usually conducted transformed into one of the most extreme cultural protests in American history, seemingly overnight. The picture is purposely focused on one singular African American in the crowd, this man becomes the subject of the picture.  While much can be said about this man, the out of focus parts of the image are also telling.  The crowd is colorful and out of focus, an abundance of different sources of lights and colors are reacting with each other, the blurry parts of the photo, similarly to the focused portion, show African Americans with their hands up seemingly coming in peace, but at the same time the colors and lights signify an undertone of chaos that the town of Ferguson was most definitely experiencing.  

A second image used in the photo essay shifts from focusing on the state of the singular African American person in Ferguson, MO at the time and brings the actions of the police force into play. (Dickinson 2) The root of the turmoil that is taking place in Ferguson at this time stems from the relationship between its African American community and its law enforcement. To combat the rioting taking place, the American government provided Ferguson law enforcement with military equipment to subdue the irate inhabitants of Ferguson.  The picture illustrates the new gear the police department recently acquired and how they are putting it to use.  The crew of what seems to be about 10 officers are shown pointing their military grade weapons at an African American man standing with his hands up.  The picture captures the type of oppression and unjust treatment that the African American community feels they are experiencing as a whole.  Another quality the picture possesses is the phrase written on the mailbox that is positioned perfectly adjacent to the group of officers, “Fuck the Police”.  The phrase on the mailbox, which has been used in similar police versus African American social situations by rap group NWA in the 90s, says out loud what a lot of Ferguson citizens are thinking, the community believes that the oppression caused by law enforcement has been drawn out long enough and that a “Fuck the Police” mentality has been formed in the head of the masses, this particular image illustrates that feeling perfectly.  With this article being written in support of the citizens of Ferguson it makes sense that it depicts the only entity the police crew could be reacting to is the singular African American citizen.  The reality of the situation is that we have no true way of knowing what is actually being viewed by the officers that would cause them to appear to be in a defensive (or possibly attacking) position, we only can see what the photographer wants us to see, a singular man being oppressed by a predominately white group of police officers.  While images provide viewers with a fast amount of information, they also provide viewers with a vast amount of room for interpretation.  This particular image, as a stand-alone entity, is a perfect symbol of black oppression at the hands of the law enforcement, but if the photographer were to provide the viewpoint of the police officers in either this image or a new picture focused solely on what the law enforcement team is viewing, the interpretation of the image could potentially change drastically. 

The final image shows two distressed women, cleaning up the remains of a recently looted convenience store. (Dickinson 3)  These two standout Ferguson citizens are doing their part as friendly neighbors in the midst of the chaos that surrounds them and their community.  The photographer captures this image through a broken convenience store window, the broken window is presumably a result of the recent rioting.  The rioting in Ferguson affected many people in many different ways.  At the heart of the protest, the people partaking in the riots meant well, but the people felt disrespected and were searching for an outlet to displace their frustrations and rioting emerged as the stage that most of these frustrations were dealt with.  While most national media attention had its eyes on the actual rioting itself, what was lost in the midst of this coverage was the fallout of the rioting and how citizens of Ferguson were affected by it.  The photograph of the two distressed women attending to the recently looted convenience store sheds light on the amount of strength and resiliency that lies within the people of Ferguson.  In the image the state of the store represents the state of Ferguson Missouri itself.  The wreckage and disarray of the store correlates with the wreckage and disarray of the town itself.  The resiliency of the women in the picture represents the resiliency of the people of Ferguson who, in the midst of a struggle unlike anything they’ve ever seen, stand by the values of civility and selflessness in order to preserve and to eventually better the community of Ferguson.  

There’s a reason the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words”, is so popular, while words and use of language are the foundation for communication and expression among humans, by comparison images possess a higher level of complexity then that of word.  In every image there is meaning, but what this meaning is can be left up for interpretation.  Photographs is a type of image that captures a specific moment in time, the picture captures the entire range of emotions and scenery in such an absolute way that using just words to describe the same event, much meaning would be lost. For a week in August of 2014 Ferguson had the eyes of the Nation observing them as they enacted and endured through of the most violent and hectic protests in American history.  The people of Ferguson went through the type of event that was so complex that words would not properly give justice to the magnitude and density of the event as a whole.  Tom Dickinson of Rolling Stone took himself into the heart of the struggle in Ferguson and captured images that give insight into the wide range of emotions that the citizens of Ferguson, Missouri were experiencing at this time.  
