Errol Morris has posted a fascinating conversation / photo essay on the New York Times’ Zoom blog. Reflecting on the eight years of George W Bush’s time as President, Morris is joined by Santiago Lyon of Associated Press, Vincent Amalvy of Agence France-Presse and Jim Bourg of Reuters – head photo editors of those news services. Each guest photographer picked the photos he felt best represented the key moments of W’s experience, and which photos most influenced the public’s perception of him.
To me, these photos have made some headway in humanising a president many consider the archetypal ugly American nightmare. The picture from Iraq, with W peeking through camouflage curtains, and the one of him comforting a Katrina survivor stand out.
In scaling the heights of the ridiculous, the shots featuring the President pardoning a turkey, dodging a shoe and scribbling a note to Condoleezza Rice during a meeting to request a bathroom break definitely take the cake. More somber, or downright terrifying, are the shots from the mistaken ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech, the ranch pose surrounded by Cheney, Rumsfeld et al and the unforgiving close-up that displays the legacy of alcoholism and war on one unprepared man’s face.
The main goal of these photos was to make it into print – and only the most attention-grabbing images manage to do that. It’s fascinating to read these photographers’ accounts of the moments and manipulations that made the photos possible. And the article ends with an apt quote by one of the earliest reviewers of photography, Oliver Wendell Holmes (writing in 1859):
‘The man beholdeth himself in the glass and goeth his way, and straightway both the mirror and the mirrored forget what manner of man he was . . .’
