The Ultimate Confrontation

The Ultimate Confrontation: The Flower and the Bayonet is a photograph of Jan Rose Kasmir (born in 1950), at that time an American high-school student. This iconic photograph was taken by French photographer Marc Riboud.^[1] Riboud photographed Kasmir on 21 October 1967 while taking part with over 100,000 anti-war activists in the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam's March on the Pentagon to protest U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Seventeen-year-old Kasmir was shown clasping a chrysanthemum and gazing at bayonet-wielding soldiers. The photo was featured in the December 30, 1969 special edition of Look magazine under the title The Ultimate Confrontation: The Flower and the Bayonet.^[2] The photo was republished world-wide and became a symbol of the flower power movement. Smithsonian magazine later called it "a gauzy juxtaposition of armed force and flower child innocence".^[3]

Kasmir graduated in 1986 from the New York College of Health Professions in Manhasset, New York as a massage therapist, and worked in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina until 1991. She then moved to Aarhus, Denmark, with her Danish husband and their daughter.^[3] She returned with her daughter to the United States in 2002, and resumed living on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.^[4]

In February 2003, Riboud again photographed Kasmir protesting against the Iraq War where she carried a poster-size copy of the 1967 photograph.^[3]

In 2010, Kasmir was invited by the Spanish organization Avalon Project Peace NGO to speak during activities for International Peace Day in Seville, Spain.^[4][5]

In January 2017, she joined the Women's March in Washington, D.C.^[6]