Women Photograph: 2025 Year in Pictures Features Tracy Barbutes Upside-down flag on El Capitan

 Via Women Photograph

December 15, 2025

Women Photograph is proud to share our 2025 Year in Pictures — a collection of images that once again shows us a world on the brink of political turmoil, climate crisis, and an extensive range of human-made disasters. This year’s annual retrospective takes us from Malaysia to South Sudan to Peru, from the ongoing immigration raids happening across the U.S. to efforts to control the spread of malaria in Uganda. As our planet continued to emerge from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and wars raged on in Ukraine and Congo, we also were buoyed by images of birth, family, celebration, and connection. This year’s Year in Pictures was curated by Women Photograph board member and former National Geographic magazine editor Elizabeth Krist — you can pre-order the 2025 Women Photograph Annual here, and donate to Women Photograph here to support our ongoing work to diversify the visual media industry.

TRACY BARBUTES

A fired park ranger and friends hang an upside-down American flag from El Capitan (Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La), a granite monolith in Yosemite National Park, Calif., on February 22, 2025. This act of protest against the thousands of federal job cuts by the current administration coincided with the “firefall” event, which draws thousands of spectators and photographers annually.

The image went viral and ignited protests on public lands throughout the United States. I stood under El Cap—something I’d done hundreds of times—and as I documented the unfurling of that upside down flag, an act signaling distress, I couldn’t help but observe that we were gathered on colonized Indigenous land.

Flag Day, 2025

 

Flag Day is a holiday celebrated on June 14 in the United States. It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States on June 14, 1777 by resolution of the Second Continental Congress.

Throughout history, flags have elevated the emotional impact of images. 

Joe Rosenthal/©AP

Perhaps the most iconic of all flag photos is Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of six U.S. Marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. It was taken on Friday, February 23, 1945, five days after the Marines landed on the island. Almost instantly, the image came to symbolize American courage, resilience, and unity in the face of adversity, becoming a powerful emblem of the nation's resolve during World War II.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Thomas E. Franklin documented three New York firefighters raising the American flag amid the wreckage of the fallen World Trade Center towers. Like Rosenthal’s photo, it was universally embraced, an uplifting photo that defined resilience and unity.

Thomas Franklin/©Bergen Record

The weaponization of the flag has similarly produced iconic photographs. In 1976, Stanley Forman photographed a white protester outside City Hall assaulting an African American attorney with the American flag. “The photo shocked Boston” made front pages across the U.S. and also won a Pulitzer Prize. Captioned “The Soiling of Old Glory”, to this day it offers a dramatic window onto the turbulence of the 1970s and race relations in America.

©Stanley Forman

Nearly fifty years later, on January 6, 2021, a weaponized American flag was documented once again. David Butow’s unsettling photo of Trump supporters attacking police from the steps of the Capitol is a modern echo of Forman’s Soiling of Old Glory.

©David Butow

And most recently, on February 22, 2025 – almost exactly 80 years to the day after Joe Rosenthal’s Iwo Jima Photograph - Tracy Barbutes photographed an inverted American flag — historically used as a sign of distress — off the side of El Capitan, a towering rock formation in Yosemite National Park, hung to protest the Trump administration’s cuts to the National Park Service. Hundreds of visitors had gathered to photograph an annual phenomenon in the park known as firefall, when the setting sun causes a seasonal waterfall on El Capitan to glow orange. One spectator commented: “I feel like our national parks are national treasures, and they need to be protected, as does our democracy. It was a call to action and a call for hope.”

©Tracy Barbutes

©Ron Haviv

Supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris react to results on election night, 2024 Washington D.C

©Mark Peterson

Ku Klux Klan New Member Meeting, Kentucky, May, 2025

Monroe Gallery Announces Representation of Tracy Barbutes Instantly Iconic Photograph of Upside Down Flag Protest At Yosemite National Park

 April 10, 2025

Monroe Gallery Announces Representation of Tracy Barbutes Instantly Iconic Photograph of Upside Down Flag Protest At Yosemite National Park

©Tracy Barbutes

An upside-down American flag hangs from El Capitan near Yosemite National Park’s Horsetail Falls to protest the thousands of federal job cuts made by President Donald Trump’s administration, February 22, 2025

On February 22, 2025 – almost exactly 80 years to the day after Joe Rosenthal’s Iwo Jima Photograph - Tracy Barbutes photographed an inverted American flag — historically used as a sign of distress — off the side of El Capitan, a towering rock formation in Yosemite National Park, hung to protest the Trump administration’s cuts to the National Park Service. Hundreds of visitors had gathered to photograph an annual phenomenon in the park known as firefall, when the setting sun causes a seasonal waterfall on El Capitan to glow orange. One spectator commented: “I feel like our national parks are national treasures, and they need to be protected, as does our democracy. It was a call to action and a call for hope.”

"Heading to Yosemite that Saturday, I had been told there might be some form of protest at El Capitan (Tu-tok-ah-nu-lah), the park’s iconic 3,000-foot granite monolith.

 There were unconfirmed reports that at least one recently-fired park employee would rappel with an American flag to protest his firing, as well as to protest the thousands of federal jobs lost due to the Trump administration/Elon Musk DOGE cuts. 

 The event would likely happen near Horsetail Fall, during “firefall” – a natural phenomenon that draws thousands of spectators each February. 

 I stood under El Cap, something I’ve done hundreds of times, and as I documented the unfurling of that upside down American flag, an act signaling distress, I couldn’t help but think of the paradox of the overall situation as we were gathered on colonized Indigenous land. 

 There wasn’t an immediate or overwhelming reaction from the crowd, though there was no missing the event. While intent on capturing a series of images, I was mindful that I was documenting a bold, courageous, historic act.

 It wasn’t until later that night and the next morning as the image went viral that I began to understand what those actions, and the image, meant. Did Nate Vance, the fired park employee behind the flag protest, and his cohorts, shake people out of a collective stupor and spark a movement of resistance." --  Tracy Barbutes

Barbutes is a photojournalist, writer, and wildfire photographer based near Yosemite.

This photograph will be on exhibit in the Monroe Gallery booth C8 at The Photography Show presented by the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD)

"The Flag Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning"

 Via Field of View

Original article posted on July 12, 2024

"Throughout history, flags have elevated the emotional impact of images, attracting photographers — and photo editors — like moths to a flame."   click to read full article

The article analyzes several photographs, including these by Gallery photographers:

Stanley Forman

The Soiling of Old Glory" Anti-Busing Protest, Boston, 1976

David Butow

January 6, 2021, Washington, DC. Supporters of President Trump battle law enforcement on the West steps of The Capitol during the attack on the day of Joe Biden’s election certification by Congress.

Joe Rosenthal/AP

Marines of the 28th Regiment of the 5th Division Raise the American Flag Atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, 1945

"Going down the rabbit hole of photos that are elevated, and in many defined, by flags...."

 

Stanley Forman, photographer behind iconic Pulitzer-winning images hangs up his lens

 Via The Forward

January 12, 2022

‘The Soiling of Old Glory’ won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Spot Photography. In it teen Joseph Rakes (L) uses an American flag to attack civil rights lawyer and activist Ted Landsmark (R) during protests over the Boston busing crisis, Apr. 5, 1976.

©Stanley Forman

Gallery photographer Stanley Forman has retired after 55 years cruising the streets of Boston in search of breaking news.

"If there’s a definitive Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, it’s “The Soiling of Old Glory” — Stanley Forman’s spot news winner for the Boston Herald American in 1976. In it, a youth turns an American flag into a weapon to use against a Black man at a school busing protest.

Then again, make that two definitive photos: The year before, Forman also won the Pulitzer for spot news with a harrowing image of a woman and her goddaughter falling out of the sky in his photo, “Fire Escape Collapse.”

Forman, 76, who began in newspapers in 1966 and switched to TV news videography two decades later, spent 55 years cruising the streets of Boston in search of breaking news, much of that time in a gas-guzzling Mercury Monarch. He retired on Dec. 31.

Or so he says.

“I have a great home life,” he said by phone from his home in Boston’s northern suburbs on the first weekend of the rest of his life. His primary plan is providing daycare for his four-month-old grandson, adding: “And I can do a limited amount of chasing on my own.” 

Read full article here   Jewish photographer who won Pulitzer retires – The Forward

Happy Fourth of July.....

Steve Schapiro: "Be Happy", Fourth of July, Michigan City, Indiana, 2000

Once Upon a Time… Veteran photog Steve Schapiro serves up poignant history

Steve Schapiro: Boy with Flag, Selma March, 1965

Via The Santa Fe Reporter
July 1, 2014
By Enrique Limón


 More than 50 iconic photographs by LIFE veteran Steve Schapiro go on display this Saturday at Monroe Gallery’s Once Upon a Time in America.


Over the last five decades, Schapiro has documented the transcendent and the mundane surrounding some of the country’s greatest battles, accomplishments and cultural milestones—ranging from Robert F.Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign to candid moments depicting Marlon Brando on the set of The Godfather.


 A lifelong practitioner of the craft, Schapiro developed a love for photography at age 9, when he would try to emulate the shots of the father of photojournalism, Henri Cartier-Bresson.


“This is a show about America and different aspects of America,” Schapiro tells SFR from his Chicago home.


 Aspects like 1965’s MLK-led Selma to Montgomery marches.


 “It was really a turning point, in the sense that so many people were mobilized,” Schapiro reminisces, “because, really what a lot of the Civil Rights movement was about was trying to energize people in the South—particularly black people—to vote and to feel that it was safe to vote and that they could vote, despite the fact that the culture of the times was against them.”


Witnessing several interruptions and threats of violence during the marches, Schapiro kept on shooting and at one point captured a youth resting under the shadow of an American flag.


“It’s symbolic of the spirit that kids have regarding their feelings that things were only going to get better, and that nonviolence was the proper course to take."


That particular picture wasn’t selected by magazine editors at the time, but was like many in his oeuvre, one that came to be by chance after he went through his old contact sheets.


 “Sometimes you look at pictures and you don’t know why they’re iconic or why people relate to them,” he says. “It’s a subtle thing, but there are just moments where all of that happens and the image presents a statement that goes in some ways beyond what you’re seeing.”


 Once Upon a Time in America
Opening Reception with Steve Schapiro: 5-7 pm Saturday, July 5
Exhibition continues through September 21, 2014
 Monroe Gallery of Photography
112 Don Gaspar Ave., 992-0800
www.monroegallery.com