Picture Prompt: History Series! (#1)

This week I’m bringing back Picture Prompts! Picture prompts are some of my favorite prompts to create. First, they’re relatively simple. Second, as the saying goes: A picture is worth a thousand words. Most of all, I have always loved to look for compelling images, particularly those from history.

In high school, one of my favorite things to do was to create collages. I’d cut pictures from magazines and use rubber cement to glue them to planks of wood I’d dig out of the garage. I also had a fascination with old black and white images—especially that famous one of the sailor kissing the nurse on V-J day during WWII (the story behind this famous photo isn’t quite as romantic as I imagined it to be when I was a teenager, but it’s still a great picture).

Thanks to amazing online resources like the Digital Public Library of America, it’s easy to freely access a wide array of historical photographs. So, I thought I’d start a quick series of Picture Prompts. You can, of course, dig up the real story behind these photos, but the point of this writing exercise is to use your imagination to create a story of your own.

The prompt is simple: Study the picture. The colors, shapes, faces, setting, background. Ask your imagination this question: What does this picture make me think about? Imagine a whole entire life, a single moment, a dream, anything. Write a whole story, write one scene, write a poem, write a quick character sketch—whatever comes to mind. Then - go write.

Okay. Here’s the first photo:

*Scroll down to read my take on this Picture Prompt, and to leave a comment with your own writing, if so inclined!

My take:

My mother wore bright red lipstick when she cleaned the house

or when we went to the grocery store

or the doctor’s office when my throat was sore.

She was not what you might call ‘girly’

my mother

She kept her nails short

and her hands were ready to do the work

that was needed. She cared about

politics and equal rights and I believe

she would have marched on Washington if her life

had turned out differently.

I never understood the lipstick.

It was so unlike the person I knew

the one I called mother

but I didn’t know all of her. She was, first,

a woman.

Now I am also a mother and I see how sometimes

what you sacrifice is also what you gain:

a dream for a dream.

Thanks for reading.

-Beth