Week 6 Religion

Catherine Wessinger Rev. H. James Yamauchi. (2020, December 4). The deaths of 76 Branch Davidians in April 1993 could have been avoided – so why didn't anyone care? The Conversation. Retrieved October 13, 2021, from https://theconversation.com/the-deaths-of-76-branch-davidians-in-april-1993-could-have-been-avoided-so-why-didnt-anyone-care-90816.

            The picture above is of two women sitting and selling "cult" T-shirts. Seems like a funny thing, the two women in the picture are smiling and carrying on a conversation together. Little do we know they are sitting outside of MT Carmel in Waco Texas. If you don't know what happened in Waco then you will learn it was the setting for a cult and law enforcement shootout. 76 people lost their lives including the leader of the group. The idea of this picture is two people kind of making fun of the situation, right? Well yeah they are making fun of it. The photographer wanted to capture that moment. They are sitting right next to a big tragedy in the US but they are making jokes about it and are selling t-shirts about it.  Now I factor this picture under religion because if you think about it a cult is a religion. To some people cults are nothing and all just blasphemy, but to others that's their whole life. They truly believe in whoever their "leader" is. Every word they say is the truth, kinda like how real religion works. The photograph was taken by a regular digital camera. It was taken a few years after the digital camera actually came out. This photos purpose was to show how the public was reacting to the news of this religious group and what happened out in MT Carmel. The contents of this image represent irony, they tell the viewers "Hey, look at this. Were making fun of something terrible that happened because its a cult and they deserved it." We know now that these people were brainwashed and most people in crazy cults are brainwashed so it's not really their fault more like whoever influenced them or ordered them arounds fault. You can tell what year it is by all of the details in the photo. Just the graining and how the picture already makes it look older you can tell that this was a while ago. Also the car that's in the picture is an older type car and if you really know cars you would know what year it is and compare the year that the car is to how the women look with their vintage looking clothes (vintage for us). Photography of significant times in history is amazing to have, we can look back at what happened at that time and compare if something like that is happening now. History repeating itself. We can learn how the world felt about event through meaningful pictures.