Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, New York City, USA (1962) is a famous photograph by Diane Arbus.
The photo shows a boy, with the left strap of his shorts awkwardly hanging off his shoulder, tensely holding his long, thin arms by his side. Clenched in his right hand is a toy grenade, and his left hand is held in a claw-like gesture; his facial expression is maniacal. Arbus captured this photograph by having the boy stand while moving around him, claiming she was trying to find the right angle. The boy became impatient and told her to "Take the picture already!" His expression conveys his exasperation and impatience with the whole endeavor, as the contact sheet for the shoot reveals. In other pictures, he is seen as a happy child.
The boy in the photograph is Colin Wood, son of tennis player Sidney Wood. An interview with Colin, with his recollections about Arbus taking this photograph, is presented in the BBC documentary "The Genius of Photography".
After writing the song "Teach Your Children" in 1968 and recording it, Graham Nash discovered this photograph in a San Francisco gallery and found that it related to the song's message about nonviolence. The photograph was used, without permission, on the first version of the cover of Canadian punk band SNFU's 1984 album And No One Else Wanted to Play after the band "found the picture in the library." The image is also used on the cover of American Indie Rock band Cloud Cult's debut album Who Killed Puck?. An original print of the photograph sold for $408,000 in April 2005 at Christie's New York.
Famous quotes containing the words child, toy, hand, grenade, central and/or park:
“Play is a major avenue for learning to manage anxiety. It gives the child a safe space where she can experiment at will, suspending the rules and constraints of physical and social reality. In play, the child becomes master rather than subject.... Play allows the child to transcend passivity and to become the active doer of what happens around her.”
—Alicia F. Lieberman (20th century)
“In the great department store of life, baseball is the toy department.”
—Los Angeles Sportscaster. quoted in Independent Magazine (London, Sept. 28, 1991)
“His friends he loved. His direst earthly foes—
Cats—I believe he did but feign to hate.
My hand will miss the insinuated nose,
Mine eyes the tail that wagg’d contempt at Fate.”
—Sir William Watson (1858–1935)
“Good manners, Madam, are had these days not
For your asking, nor mine, nor what-we-used-to-be’s.
The day is a loud grenade that bursts a smile
Of serious weeds in a comic lily plot....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“The Federal Constitution has stood the test of more than a hundred years in supplying the powers that have been needed to make the Central Government as strong as it ought to be, and with this movement toward uniform legislation and agreements between the States I do not see why the Constitution may not serve our people always.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I’m engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.”
—Sir John Betjeman (1906–1984)