Yevtushennko, 1970:

“As loving freedom with bullets
And taking freedom with bullets,
You shoot at yourself, America.”

The photo is from the Boston Globe of a detective collecting evidence from a shot through a school bus window that killed an elementary school child. The icon is a Russian icon called the “Mother of God” . The first stanza is from a Yevtushenko’s poem, written following the assinations of American political leaders in the 1960s and published by City Lights Books. My father subscribed to Time magazine throughout his life. I first encountered the poem there during the Nixon administration.

Did the photographer know the tradition of icons when he or she framed a clicked the shutter? Or did the editor, who chose this photo for the front page?