Alfred Stieglitz said that “In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.” Perhaps fittingly, the Wikipedia blurb that appears with a Google search of his name credits to him the status of “photography (as) an accepted art form.” To put it another photographs capture an image of the moment, but do not capture the image of the moment; the subtle reality captured by the photographer may be the reality they experience, but it is not reality.
Pete Souza, the chief White House photographer under Barack Obama, gave us an insight into this phenomenon, publishing photo after photo on Instagram, Flickr, and now in print in multiple books. Shealah Craighead, the Trump administration’s chief photographer, however, has posted very few of her photos, the majority of which are published in a single 50-photo “First Fifty Days” album on the President’s Facebook.
My eyes are immediately drawn to two pictures on Souza’s Instagram page and two pictures on Trump’s Facebook. Peculiarly, all four are photos of hands.
The hands, arms, and torsos of President Obama and Representative John Lewis form an M of skin, gray, and pinstriped navy, the elder hand grasped by the younger. There are several stories told here, with all of them simultaneously true. The owner of the older hand seems to lean on the younger as he marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, following the steps he took five decades ago. At the same instant, in the same photo, however, the younger hand meaningfully grasps the elder. Physically holding onto courage, onto good trouble, onto the aging emblem of Civil Rights.
Two hands reach for Clark Reynolds, both just barely in contact with his child-size necktie at the moment the photographer’s mirror flipped up to expose the sensor of his camera for mere milliseconds. The longer you look, the more details you notice. Clark’s dress shirt, despite his rather sharp outfit (for a toddler), hangs low out the bottom of his suit jacket, suggesting that he’s been standing and fidgeting behind the rope line for quite some time. The president’s head, smiling and out of focus, takes up the majority of the top of the frame as he leans over to adjust the young man’s tie. A smiling moment amidst the world’s most stressful job, brought about by an unsmiling child standing before him, seemingly unaware of just how cool this is. Only another picture in this post shows the wonder he felt, perhaps one of the most famous pictures of the eight years Obama served. A woman’s hand stretches from behind the president to assist him in his task, only revealed by the caption as belonging to first lady Michelle Obama. Finally, your eyes follow the tie down from the First Lady’s hand to the President’s. You notice the final touch, that Clark’s tie, tucked into his suit jacket, wraps around the rope line in front of him, a comedic touch that only a caring parent would think to add.
Representative Greg Walden’s hands sit atop a piece of paper, one holding a pen, one holding down the page as if it could blow away. In front of him sits a placard with his name and title on it. That is all. No nuance, no story.
The second picture, to be blunt, is a bad picture. The president’s frame fills the leftmost two thirds of the frame, and his hand signs a massive scrawled signature on a campaign hat. That is all. No nuance, no story.
This piece of writing may seem like a review of photography, but it is not. It is a critique of the way this White House operates. Rather than the approach that Pete Souza took, of capturing complicated, nuanced, images, including moments of disagreement and weakness, there is an utter lack of that in any feed associated with the current president. His feed today features mostly signs that read his own name and staged pictures of himself and his family. The nuances of the White House documentary photography of yesteryear appears to have faded away. Here’s hoping that’s temporary.
Process notes
It was pretty difficult to decide what to write about, as my subject is not one that is routinely documented in the sciences, other than how much certain claims about topics like global warming or the efficacy of vaccinations can be. Instead, I decided to talk about something adjacent – we often consider things like photography and videography to be objective, and at times photographers and videographers strive to be exactly that. However, inherent in any photo or video is both a story (what was going on) and an intention (what the photographer or videographer intended to convey). One thing I think we can all agree on is the general lack of nuance coming from the Trump administration, and I think this is a good way of examining it. All the photos published have a purpose, the vast majority of which have the purpose of making President Trump look presidential, a complex word I talked about early in the quarter as it related to exactitude. The pictures of President Obama, on the other hand, are highly nuanced and complex, showing courage, emotion, and weakness through their composition.
In order to show this, I focused on four pictures where at least a significant portion of the picture is someone’s hand or hands, and went from there. As much as possible I tried to avoid making this an art review, and talk about how I personally experienced the photos, but I feel like I slipped too much into art critique. When I revise this for my portfolio, I’ll be sure to address that.