It has become for many the defining image of the Black Lives Matter rallies that have swept America the past year. A woman standing calmly, her long dress the only thing moving in the breeze, as two police officers in full riot gear confronted her in the middle of a roadway to arrest her.
That photo was taken in July in Baton Rouge, Louisiana by photographer Jonathan Bachman and the woman in the dress is registered nurse Iesha Evans, who for the first time met each other on Monday in New York.
READ MORE: The woman in the dress: The story behind the ‘iconic’ Black Lives Matter protest photo
Speaking at a panel discussion on photojournalism hosted by Reuters, who employed Bachman during the protests in Baton Rouge and the International Center for Photography, Evans and Bachman discussed the image.
“What she did that day is courage that I have never seen before in my career. And it was a real honour to take this image and to finally meet her and just have some time to sit and talk and catch up,” Bachman said, adding that it happened so fast that he felt that “instinct took over” when he was taking the photograph.
“I was literally as the photo depicts, standing in the middle of the street, just staring into the faces of these officers,” Evans recalled about the instant.
“And it was just like a rush and overwhelming feeling of emotion, it was just so many questions so many things going into my mind, going through my mind.”
Evans, who spent one day in jail following the arrest, said that she felt very calm.
“I really wasn’t concerned with the consequence because there is a bigger reason there. We are there for the murder of Alton Sterling. We are protesting, we shouldn’t be pushed off to the side,” she said.
Evans, who currently resides in Pennsylvania, was in Baton Rouge to protest the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling, 37, in the city.
Sterling’s death, followed by the fatal shooting of another black man, Philando Castile, 32, near St. Paul, Minnesota, revived a wave of protests in recent years over police treatment of minorities that has given rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.
The photo went viral across different social media platforms and was picked up by newspapers, magazines, websites and television outlets around the world.
READ MORE: Thousands attend protests across U.S. against police killings in Louisiana and Minnesota
Evans said that she tries to separate herself from the picture, in part to hear different feedback.
“A lot of people have come back to me, from a feminist standpoint, and that is not the reason why I was there. I was there from an African standpoint, from a whole different reason but I tend to detach myself.
Many months on Bachman said that he understands why the photograph has gone viral.
“I read in an article that America was hungry for an image like this to represent an issue of this magnitude, and I guess this is the image that the public picked.”
Different media outlets have praised the photograph. The Atlantic magazine called the image “a single photo from Baton Rouge that’s hard to forget,” while the BBC hailed it as “legendary.” The Washington Post said it “captured a critical moment for the country,” while Britain’s Daily Mail website called it “an iconic arrest photo.”
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