Time and Place: Quest for equality

This picture was taken at the immigration reform rally held at the Georgia State Capitol May 1. Thousands filled the streets outside the Capitol to protest the recent Arizona immigration bill and to encourage President Obama to reform immigration laws.

I was amazed at the number of people who came out for the rally and I took a lot of pictures of the huge mass of people, trying different angles, focal points and compositions. Visually, it was an intriguing scene looking out at so many faces. I put on my telephoto lens and just scanned around looking at peoples' facial expressions. Some people were angry, some were tired, and some were more pensive. There were young kids, teenagers, families, older people. Looking at the sea of faces through a 200mm lens at this angle, everyone was looking just past me, and I naturally started creating my own stories based on what I saw in peoples' faces.

Pretty quickly, I noticed the couple in this photo, whose posture and expression seemed so different from those around them. I opened my aperture up to try to give them separation from the rest of the crowd. I took several photos of them leaning on each other, and I ended up liking this one the most. He seems to be protecting her while she leans on him for some rest. I like that he's intensely looking at something or someone out of the frame. And to me, this picture encourages people to imagine what he's thinking, what he's looking at, and what his story is.

But this image stood out most to me looking at it from a race and equality perspective. A lot of the speakers at the rally were talking about immigration reform as a civil rights struggle. Senator Vincent Fort said "the same people that racially profile brown people are the same people that racially profile black people." I think this photograph says something about different races coming together for a common cause. It made me think about the struggles that people of differing races, religions, and sexual orientations go through in the quest for equality.

Ultimately, I think peoples' ability to interpret what's going on in this image in their own way and perhaps think about these issues of race and equality is the reason this was my favorite picture I took that day.

More photos from Atlanta's immigration reform rally.

(Photo by Alan Friedman)