March on Crystal City
“March on Crystal City” was an antiwar demonstration that occurred on March 21, 2009, protesting the Iraq War. The event was sponsored by ANSWER Coalition, and was promoted as “March on the Pentagon”. However, using that name for the event was a bit inaccurate. While it is true that the march route took demonstrators through the Pentagon reservation, far more time and energy was spent in Arlington’s Crystal City neighborhood than at the Pentagon. Thus when I went to write about the event, I took to calling it the “March on Crystal City”, not only to differentiate between this event and a 2007 Pentagon march that was also covered on Schumin Web, but also as a jab at the somewhat inaccurate way that ANSWER marketed their event.
This photo set was originally presented in Life and Times under the same title in an illustrated narrative format, as is typical for Life and Times photo sets. It was released on May 23, 2009. I was inspired to remake this set for Photography after rereleasing a photo feature from the September 24, 2005 anti-war march in May 2019. In that instance, the original ran on the main page the day after the event, and the photo’s appearance was consistent with my style at that time. The goal with the newer feature was to take that older photo, and present it again with the somewhat more refined style that I have today. Rather than focusing on the entire costume, as I did in 2005, the new version zooms in more, and puts more emphasis on the subject’s face, making that more of a focal point. I also didn’t like the way the color came out in the original, so I converted it to black and white, adjusted the contrast, and colored it. I consider the result much improved over the original. This set is an extension of this same line of thought, taking older material and creating a new presentation out of it now that I’m older, wiser, and a bit more refined.
In choosing what photo set to remake, I considered several different older sets. The first criterion was that the set had to be at least ten years old, which eliminated anything 2010 and later. The 2003 antiwar march was considered, but quickly eliminated because it already appeared in Photography. I also considered a few Funk the War shoots, J27, and the original Pentagon march, but I didn’t feel like I could do what I wanted to do with that material. I settled on the March on Crystal City set because it was ten years old, it was made with my Canon Powershot SX10IS camera, and the photography was relatively good for the time, with a lot of shots focusing on people. My method of remaking this photo set was to forget that this was a remake, and treat it as if it were new material. I pulled the original shoot out of the archives, and selected photos anew. Thus while some photos may be familiar, some are previously unpublished. My intent this time around was to focus more on the human side of the demonstration with the Photography format, and not just present a recounting of events, as would be typical for a Life and Times set.
While the photos appear here in the same style as the remade photo feature, converted to black and white with a color overlay, the photos are also available in full color on benschumin.com.
“March on Crystal City” was an antiwar demonstration that occurred on March 21, 2009, protesting the Iraq War. The event was sponsored by ANSWER Coalition, and was promoted as “March on the Pentagon”. However, using that name for the event was a bit inaccurate. While it is true that the march route took demonstrators through the Pentagon reservation, far more time and energy was spent in Arlington’s Crystal City neighborhood than at the Pentagon. Thus when I went to write about the event, I took to calling it the “March on Crystal City”, not only to differentiate between this event and a 2007 Pentagon march that was also covered on Schumin Web, but also as a jab at the somewhat inaccurate way that ANSWER marketed their event.
