Henriksen 1

Samantha Henriksen

Professor Grover

College Writing R1A

The Use of Dark Color in Immigration Images

Images are used to capture a moment in time. A still depiction of reality with four

borders. Photographers use this power to educate the general public on other peoples’ stories and

experiences. When real issues arise, the best method to telling a believable story about the issue

is through a photograph. When an audience is able to see something with their own eyes, it is the

most believable method in telling a story. “I saw it with my own eyes!” is the reaction that the

photographer wants from the audience in order to tell a convincing story. Photographers will also

demonstrate their craft in their work. Their artistic intuition will support the story they are trying

to tell, making it skillfully composed. In the story of immigration in America, most, if not all,

photographers have the intention to induce sympathy in the audience through the use of vivid

photographs. Most Americans have never witnessed the immigration crisis first-hand, and

therefore, the artfully composed image within four borders is the only way to get the real story

since they have “seen it with their own eyes!” John Moore, a photographer for the New York

Times, “humanizes” the immigration crisis in the U.S. to tell the true story of real people who are

in the midst of finding a new life for themselves. Specifically, in the New York Times article

and photo gallery, “Photographs That Humanize the Immigration Debate”, Moore wields the

artistic instinct of focusing on dark colors to induce a somber tone when telling his story of

immigration to educate the American general public.

The contrast of light and dark colors are used in the first image chosen from the article to

demonstrate the contradiction between the idea that the U.S. is a free country full of opportunity
 Henriksen 2
and the reality that the door is shut on many searching for those opportunities. In this story, light

from a border police’s vehicle shines brightly on detained migrants while on their way across the

border. Pictured closest to the audience is a mother and child clasping onto each other. Other

women are crouching over as they await further instructions from the border patrol. Their

journey to find new opportunity is abruptly stopped in this picture as there is no movement, just

simple stillness on a dirt path. Sympathy is induced in the audience as their postures, the

crouched positions, suggest fear. The image is predominantly dark with the bright lights from the

vehicle almost blinding the detainees as well as the audience. The migrants have their heads

turned away from the audience, leaving their scared facial expression inferred. The bright light is

central in the image, and it is controlled by the border police who are symbolically shutting off

the light for the crouching detainees. By inferring the fear induced in these migrants, the

audience is immediately able to feel sympathy. Thus, the story told by Moore about these

migrants corresponds with his artistic intuition to align freedom with light and fear with

darkness.

In the same series by the New York Times, the next image centers on the same mother

and child as seen before. This time, the child’s face is exposed as she is crying while her mother

is being searched by border police in the same dark setting. The child is the only facial

expression the audience can see proving the full purpose of the photographer is to evoke

sympathy from the audience. Leo R. Chavez, author of Covering Immigration: Popular Images

and the Politics of a Nation, addresses the use of the mother and child in a majority of the

pictured stories about immigration to “elicit sympathy toward refugees” (Chavez 73). “These

images arouse empathy through recognition of a shared humanity” (Chavez 73) since Americans

reside on the fundamentals of “saving the women and children first” (Chavez 73). In attempts to
 Henriksen 3
ensure the nation’s edification on this crisis, the photographer aims for the audience to feel

sympathy in attempts to “galvanize public opinion in favor of refugee assistance and

international aid” (Chavez 73). Undeniably, a small girl crying as her mother is being searched

against a car by a big man creates the message that the way migrants are treated on the border is

inhumane. The mother and child involvement in this image demonstrates the sympathetic

intention of Moore in companion to his skillful choice of capturing this moment in utter

darkness. Capturing the solemn mother and child in a dark setting at night sets a desolate mood.

Seeing the troubled mother and child combined with the overall color determines the mood of

the image which contributes to just how sympathetic the audience will be.

The border crisis encompasses a majority of the images on immigration in the US. It is a

prevalent issue to the American audience in regards to how the president deals with it, and thus,

how the media chooses to portray it. Thomas Frank, a journalist at The Guardian, recognized that

most publication services have no idea who the Americans are that support Trump so much so

that Nick Kristof, a New York Times columnist, made one up to engage in the other perspective

(Frank). Furthermore, the article used here from the New York Times, one of the nation’s

leading publications, is against Trump and, therefore, pro immigration, making the story

captured in the images sympathized. Accordingly, all of the images discussed here have painted

border patrol in a negative way as they have stopped a group of women on their way to a new

life, made a little girl cry, and in the next picture, led a group of migrants away from the US in

chains. The next important focus Chavez analyses in Covering Immigration, applies the

directionality of movement convention in images. Chavez references a picture in which a

migrant is walking forwards in a magazine cover. He writes that this directionality, “suggests

that the people in the image are coming at the reader, metaphorically at us, the consumers… and
 Henriksen 4
moving towards us (the United States)” (Chavez 54). In the image where the border patrol is

leading a group of migrants away from the US in chains, the sky is a beautiful shade of blue with

the silhouettes of migrants connected by a chain. Inversely to Chavez’s observation, the migrants

are being led in the opposite direction from the audience, creating the assumption that they are

walking away from the US. Their chances at a new life have been stopped. The silhouettes of the

migrants walking away from the audience in the blue sky creates the story of a peaceful denial of

freedom as their entry to the US was rejected. Again, the distressed mood of this image is

amplified with the color of the setting. The refugees are only highlighted going away from us

and the dark silhouettes are clear amidst the dark blue night.

Finally, the last image stars the other perspective- the evil border patrol characterized by

the previous photographs. This image sits at the bottom of the New York Times’ gallery as it

centers the border patrol, not the migrants on their way across the border. In this image, Pvt.

Phillip Moore is peacefully sleeping on top of a bench in Arizona that overlooks the fence

separating Mexico and the US. He has a sly grin on his face, he is completely safe and has no

possibility of getting detained like the migrants in their attempts to cross the border. Chavez

analyses the use of a border as, “‘as a discrete spatial partitioning of territory’” (Chavez 77). He

is lying high in the hills that surround the border, increasing his power over possible migrants

that might cross the border. This image confirms that “[b]orders supposedly establish the

territorial boundaries of a nation and people, distinguishing those inside from those outside the

nation” (Chavez 77). This perspective is also shown at night; however, there is a bright light that

is shown on Pvt. Moore amidst all the darkness from the night. He is not affected by the darkness

that has been a constant representation of desolation throughout the previous images. Across the

border fence, in Mexico, there are also lights along the streets symbolizing hope in the intentions
 Henriksen 5
to find new opportunity. The rest of Mexico depicted in the picture is made up of small buildings

which contrasts the multitude of cities in the US filled with skyscrapers offering opportunities.

In reality, immigration pictures will ceaselessly tell a story but there will always be a

limit to that story with those four borders. In the New York times photography series titled,

“Photographs That Humanize the Immigration Debate”, Moore wields the artistic instinct of

focusing on dark colors to induce a somber tone when telling his story of immigration. This

composition technique in union with the word “humanize” immediately gives a sympathetic lens

to the audience to introduce them to the story of immigrants truly being a human story. Images

depicting the crisis in the US immigration serve an important purpose. They give insights to

citizens of the US with no other modes of understanding the true state of the problems that the

country is facing under the Trump administration. The real story is: There are people suffering

who need a better life. America should be the place for these people to come for this new life;

however, unfair and rash leadership has allowed these problems to become a crisis issue. The

real story is that people amidst the immigration crisis need help, and as American citizens and as

the audience to these pictures, we need to do something to help. Photographs should not be

dependent on “humanizing” us; although, Moore deems “[t]he best we can do, often as wire

service photojournalists, is to photograph honestly and caption correctly” (Estrin).

(Word Count: 1634)

Below are the images in order of mention from (All extracted New York Times):

1)
 Henriksen 6

“Border Patrol agents arriving to detain Central American asylum seekers in McAllen, Tex., in

June.”

2)

“Yanela crying as her mother is searched.”

3)
 Henriksen 7

“Undocumented immigrants are led after being handcuffed by Border Patrol agents in Weslaco,

Tex., in April 2016.”

4)

“Pvt. Philip Moore resting during a shift overlooking the border fence with Mexico in Nogales,
Ariz., in June 2011.”