Signs of Protest - Stand Up
Labor rights protesters at the Wisconsin State Capitol
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The photograph “Stand Up” by Clint Thayer was selected as a Jurors’ Top Pick in the Signs of Labor exhibition by the Center for Photography at Madison. Thayer said, “I made the photograph on the evening of February 14, 2011, during one of the earliest points of the labor protests. While photographing near the Capitol at night, I came across a small group of protestors and was struck by both the intimacy and the intensity of the moment.” Thayer asked the subjects for permission to photograph them and used an off-camera flash to provide backlighting. The resulting image is angular and starkly lit, with the Capitol rising at an off-kilter angle relative to the subjects. The shadows cast by the protestors’ figures are elongated and the writing on one homemade sign appears luminous. “Many viewers have asked me if the image was altered using Photoshop,” said Thayer. “Aside from cropping and grayscale correction, it was not. The visual elements you see were achieved in camera.”
