Visiting the International Center of Photography was a tremendous experience. We had the luxury of a tour guide who appeared to be enthusiastic about the subject and had a great deal of knowledge for John Wood, amongst other photographers. Just to reiterate a few of the things we learned, John Wood was a photographer in the 1960’s to the 1990’s. He focused his pictures on mainly on contemporary issues of his time. For example, Wood’s art revolved around the political, social, and environmental issues that were prevalent at the time such as, the Vietnam War and nuclear wastes among other subjects.

          Some of the photos that we discussed included the gun encompassed by daisies, “My Lai Massacre”, “Cactus”, and a nuclear tower. Each picture represented a different issue that John Wood was trying to express. In the first photo of the gun and daisies, I believed the meaning of the photo was to show the two different sides of violence (gun) and beauty or nature (daisies), and the black and white color scheme could further prove that point. However, the tour guide went on to say that the photo was in fact a negative, as were a few of Wood’s photos. After giving it some thought, perhaps using the negatives literally states that guns or weapons are “negative”. The “My Lai Massacre” revolved around the topic of the Vietnam War and showed continuously zoomed in shots of the image. Wood could have used this technique to show how out of focus Americans were of what was going on in Vietnam. Lastly, the “Cactus” and nuclear tower were paradoxical images of each other because of the function each object plays. The initial view I had, along with one of my peers, of these photos was the idea of nature vs. industry. However, as we mentioned in class, the cactus purpose is to store water while the purpose of nuclear towers is to remove wastes.

          Prior to the tour, a few of us were waiting in the John Wood gallery waiting for the arrival of the tour guide. In the meantime, we began looking at all the photos and started explaining to each other what we thought of each photo and what the underlying meaning behind them could be. When we realized that the tour guide was waiting upstairs, we made our way to the group but stopped to see some more photos on the way and were really impressed with them. I really intend to go back and get a second look at the other galleries that I began looking at as well as those I had no time to get to.