Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial

Author's Comments

The inscription that stops me every time is not the largest one. It is cut into the side of the stone at roughly chest height, and in the flat light of midday it nearly disappears. But come in late afternoon in October, when the sun is low and raking from the southwest, and the letters emerge from the granite like something surfacing from deep water. That is the photograph I came for the first time not knowing I wanted. The scale of the figure is difficult to reckon with until you are standing close. Thirty feet reads as a number until you are beside it and the hand carved above you is larger than your torso. Wide compositions from the curved wall behind tell you where you are. The close work tells you something harder to name. Spring is beautiful here, as it is everywhere along the Tidal Basin, but I find fall more honest. The blossoms are gone, the crowds are lighter, and the stone reads differently against a cold sky than it does against pink and white. Morning gives you the east light on the face. Late afternoon carves the inscriptions. Those are two separate visits and both are worth making. Come before the tour groups arrive and the plaza is genuinely quiet, just the sound of the basin and whatever you brought with you.

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