Here is a great image of MacCracken Hall at my alma mater, Miami University, taken by a Mike Zatt who is a junior at the school. You can view more of Mike's work here. Miami is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful college campuses in the world and this photo backs it up.
Even more spectacular is this photo taken by Angela B. Pan of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. You can view more of Angela's work at her blog.
Visiting the VVM is a powerful experience at any time. However, I have never seen it captured more powerfully.
For those of you are younger, you probably have no idea of the controversy that was created when the design for the VVM was originally announced. The design for the memorial was chosen from entries in a national contest. Maya Lin, an architecture student at Yale who was only 21 years old, won the competition. This is how Wikipedia describes the opposition to the design.
Lin was an iconoclast. To that point, memorials were statutes. They were not long stone walls that blended into the earth with 58,195 names etched into the stone. However, when it was completed, the VVM probably captured the very essence of what a memorial should really be.
The unconventionality of the selected design was very controversial, especially among veterans. Many publicly voiced their displeasure, calling the wall "a black gash of shame."[5] Two prominent early supporters of the project, H. Ross Perot and James Webb, withdrew their support once they saw the design. Said Webb, “I never in my wildest dreams imagined such a nihilistic slab of stone.” James Watt,Secretary of the Interior under President Ronald Reagan, initially refused to issue a building permit for the memorial due to the public outcry about the design.[6]
Lin believes that if the competition had not been "blind", with designs submitted by number instead of name, she "never would have won". She received harassment after her ethnicity was revealed[citation needed]. Lin defended her design in front of the United States Congress, and eventually a compromise was reached. A bronze statue of a group of soldiers and an American flag was placed off to one side of the monument as a result.Once the design was realized, the overwhelming majority of the design's critics came to appreciate the simple beauty and emotional power of the wall, and such controversy quickly evaporated. In the words of Scruggs, "It has become something of a shrine."[5]
A few more photos by Angela. A great shot from the Lincoln Memorial looking down to the Washington Monument at sunrise.
A nature shot at Great Falls Park in Virginia.
Finally, a view of the Roebling Bridge in my hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio.
O beautiful for spacious skies...America is truly beautiful. Thanks to Mike and Angela for capturing it.
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