Tracy Barbutes

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

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.

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.”