[Student activist David Shapiro sitting behind University President Kirk's desk smoking an appropriated cigar during six-day campus uprising and protest at Columbia University, New York]

Your Mirror: Portraits from the ICP Collection
Section: Self-presentation
Nearly one thousand students participated in the April 1968 demonstrations at Columbia University, but only one—David Shapiro (b. 1947)—became the face of the movement. Wearing sunglasses and holding an unlit cigar he had found while rummaging through university president Grayson Kirk’s desk, the poetry major struck a pose of arrogance and defiance that was captured by fellow student Gerald Upham and reproduced the following week in Life magazine. Shapiro’s insouciance was a perfect portrait of the times.