This is a 1935 photo of three of the workers who carved Mount Rushmore. It’s one of the most recent additions to the Accidental Magic collection of photographs housed in the library tower on the campus of Wizard Academy.
George Washington was fully carved. Work on Thomas Jefferson had barely begun. It would take 7 more years to carve the soul of America into South Dakota granite.
I’ve always been attracted to cultural icons.
“Show me what a people admire, and I will tell you everything
about them that matters.” – Maggie Tufu, The Engines of God
What did we admire in 1935?
Who were we as a people?
Just 26 years later, novelist John Steinbeck despaired of the cynical immorality and consumerism that had overtaken us.
“True things gradually disappeared and shiny easy things took their place.”
Do you agree with Steinbeck? Or do you believe we’re the same nation at heart that we’ve always been? Email your thoughts to Daniel@WizardAcademy.org
Here are a few of the spatial and symbolic things I like about the photo:
1. the flagpole improvised from a tree.
2. the ax and the hat of the man on the right.
3. the bold stance of the man holding the flagpole over the gap.
4. the man bracing the flagpole is looking at it, instead of us.
5. the blurred edge-tip of the flag flying straight-out in the wind.
6. the heads of the men below the horizon, the flag alone above it.
7. the fabulous pattern of shadows cast by the men, the pole, and the flag.
Take a moment to look at these things and you’ll see that each of them contributes to the immediate impact of the image, even in those moments when you’re not “thinking” about them. It is the not-immediately-obvious symbols and metaphors and patterns like these that we’ll be considering today as we examine the lists you made.
What? You didn’t finish your lists?
You really need to do that before you go any further down this rabbit hole because once you see what we’re going to do with those lists you’ll no longer be able to complete them untainted by foreknowledge.