The shooting of the unarmed Michael Brown by Darren Wilson (Missouri police officer) sparked a series of riots in Ferguson, Missouri, which further drove the stake of divisiveness between the African American community and Law Enforcement. The events that transpired in the quiet town of Ferguson spearheaded the campaign against police brutality, and proved to be a catalyst for the black lives matter movement. In order to make an unbiased analysis of the image, it is important to not focus on the context of the picture but purely the picture itself. This image was taken during the riots in Ferguson, and epitomizes a perspective of the police from an African American’s perspective.  This photo can be seen as highly controversial, and can be put through in-depth analysis to understand the greater meaning behind the prominent subjects of the picture (the lone African American man and the police force) and visual elements and truth of this image.

On the surface, this is an image of an African American man standing in front of a police force clearly showing he is unarmed, to subdue any chance of being seen as a threat to the heavily armed officers in front of him.  The African American man appears to be alone, without making the assumption the police are observing something for more threatening behind him. It is difficult when observing this picture to not feel empathy for the lone man because ten armed officers are facing him down, while he is alone and unarmed. If put through a deeper analysis one can could postulate that this lone man embodies the entire African American communities’ perspective of the police force and represents the AA community as a whole. Much like this lone man the African American community feel helpless to the unjustified police brutality.

The police force poses as aggressor in this image, seemingly reluctant to yield their combative stance. The police in this image are militarized and heavily armed, which seem unwarranted for the situation (referring to the unarmed African American man, not the events going on in Ferguson). This photo seems biased against the police, making it difficult to see the situation from their perspective. In reality the police are trying to protect themselves and alleviate some of the rioting. This picture lacks the ability to show the police force as anything other then unjustified aggressors on an unarmed African American man, making the police appear to be the “bad guys” in the scenario. This picture is quintessential to the extent to which the police force acted as a militant power in Ferguson.

Aside from the predominant subjects of the photo there are visual elements that play a crucial role in understanding this image. The profaned mailbox reads “Fuck The Police”, which typifies the feelings of the local African American community. The presence of the mailbox brings visual irony into play, because the police are unaware of the malicious writing on the mailbox, even though they are right next to it. The tactical gear the police are using such as the gas masks dehumanizes them making them appear like emotionless soldiers. Seeing police officers loaded with tactical/military gear in urban, civilian setting changes the viewer’s feelings immediately, because throughout history it has been though of as dishonorable to use military tactics on a civilian population.

This image propagates racial injustice and police violence, and in and of it’s self cannot be seen as unbiased for its’ framing. The framing of the picture puts the viewer in the point of view of the lone man or African American Society. This completely changes the feeling of the image, as now the viewer is faced with the militant police force, as apposed to viewing from a removed perspective, which leads to unavoidable bias. This way of framing the picture (without context about the situation) causes the viewer to immediately feel sympathy for the lone man, and was not done on accident. The photographer of this image wanted to ensure that he could show the public his point of view and only his point of view with this picture. 

This photo was taken during the Missouri riots and can be seen as controversial because it propagates certain ideals through framing the natural subject matter and other visual elements in a biased manner. The natural subject matter is presented in one way (One lone, defenseless, African American man in the cross hairs of ten heavily armed police officers viewed as aggressors) without any context to support or appose this way of thinking. A picture like this, the viewer is forced to make a choice. If the viewer were to interpret this picture with a clear understanding of the context surrounding the situation, the viewer would be able to make a better choice of how to interpret this image. This is a serious issue because the picture only presents a singular biased way of thinking. Overall this image is representative of one interpretation of the events that happened in Ferguson and of police brutality and racial inequality as a whole.