“Contents,” Ensign, Feb. 1983, 1
Ensign
February 1983
Volume 13 Number 2
On the cover: Photos of the recently renovated Assembly Hall on Temple Square. See page 70 for further information. Photography by Eldon K. Linschoten.
Original pioneer stained-glass window.
Hand-carved rosette. The honeybee is a symbol of industriousness for Latter-day Saints.
Majestic new pipe organ is focal point of Assembly Hall’s interior; also, a view of the Assembly Hall with Seagull Monument in foreground.
Assembly Hall interior; original benches have been refinished and regrained.
Inside front cover: Seventies Hall, by Al Rounds, 56″ by 40″, watercolor, 1982. This painting depicts Nauvoo shortly before the Saints’ departure in 1846. The Seventies Hall is in the right foreground, the newly completed temple on the left.
Inside back cover: Good and Evil. Photography by Anselm Spring.
The photograph is by gifted Latter-day Saint photographer Anselm Spring of Landsberg, Germany. The photograph is the second in Brother Spring’s 1983 Ensign, photographic series on religious themes. The first treated the subject of the Creation.
“After the Creation came the Fall, of course,” says Brother Spring. “And because of that, Adam and Eve—and eventually all of us—became aware of good and evil, lightness and darkness, joy and pain, the good and bad nature of the conditions of mortality.
“I like these symbolic visual images of two birds because they represent to me eternal truths. In this particular instance there could be two stories. There is a white swan and a black bird above it. The dark or evil bird is taking flight. Thus, darkness is being cast out, evil is fleeing. What joy to know that this is possible, that we can cast darkness from us with the help of God. The photograph could tell another story also: We see a white swan, someone who is pretending to be good but who is a real imposter, someone who is one thing on the outside but another on the inside. But at death, the darkness, the evil that is really in this swan is revealed, and that which takes flight to the next life is something other than what it represented itself to be.
“This photograph reminds me that the world has its two elements—good and bad, the real and the phony. It is a place where good and evil reside, a place where we need the light, the Spirit, in order to tell the difference. See how the evil bird is illuminated against the light cloud. Against the light, darkness always manifests itself. The light is our true guide, our source of truth in this life.”