Several days ago I commented on the common and ordinary conventions of photographic representation that tend to guide and discipline photojournalistic decorum in representing the President of the United States. As I noted there, the conventions typically employed reinforce our perception of the president’s power and presence as commander-in-chief. But I also noted how the conventions can be managed in ways that call attention to their artifice, thus undermining the window-on-the world sensibility that they generally promote. And sometimes, I suggested, they can be actively exploited so as to produce effects that are wholly contrary to our ordinary expectations. In recent times such conventions have operated in something of a tension between efforts to minimize and maximize representations of President Bush’s stature. Two photographs of President Bush speaking in the Rose Garden on July 20th make the point—and more—exceedingly well.The first photograph was used to lead an AP wire report with the headline, “Bush Criticizes Democrats on Iraq”:

The AP, of course, is required to be “fair and balanced” in its reporting of any event, and no less so a media event planned by the White House. But this photograph tells a somewhat different story than the headline. First, it is important to note that in its published version the photograph is smaller by at least half than the version I’ve reprinted above, and this is not inconsequential to the interpretation it invites from its viewers. Shot from a low angle, as per the convention for emphasizing the power of the president, it is also shot from the side and at long distance. Indeed, the president is miniscule, once again dwarfed by the scene in which he is performing his office. Indeed, he is so small in relationship to his surroundings that it is hard to know exactly what he is doing—one has to strain to recognize that he is standing at a podium. He is backed up by an entourage, but they are almost entirely obscured by the roses, which clearly dominate the scene. And note too how the use of the roses to frame the action situates the viewer – presumably the American people: It is as if those who are viewing this scene are interlopers, voyeurs jealously sneaking a peek at a party to which they have not been invited. And the color seems off too, slightly washed out in a way that suggests that the roses have begun to pass their prime; the visual effect carries over to the president’s jacket, making it seem more like a drab and faded grey, than blue, his shirt and tie barely visible. It is hardly the image that an embattled president seeking public support for a contentious policy would want to portray.

One might expect to find a very different photograph of the event at the White House website and so they might be surprised to find this image which, at first glance, seems to be akin to the one used by the AP:

The differences between the two photographs are subtle but invite very different affective responses. Note first, that at the White House website the image is slightly larger than the one reproduced here. In this image the president is shot in middle-distance, and as such his body stands in comfortable proportion to the scene in which he acts. He dominates the frame and appears to be in full command of the event unfolding: Standing at a podium, speaking to an unseen audience, he is the master of his house/garden. His entourage of supporters are visible and prominent, albeit subordinate; dutifully at attention and attending to his words, they reinforce the sense that he is in control. Equally prominent is the U.S. flag, somewhat obscured in the AP photograph. But most important are the roses, which now function as a natural and pleasant setting rather than as subterfuge or camouflage. They neither obscure the viewer’s line of sight nor hide the viewer’s presence from detection. While still to the side, the viewer is now a legitimate part of the scene. The colors are rich, saturated, alive, the roses in full bloom, the suit a bright and pleasing blue, his white shirt and red tie clearly connecting him to the flag that sits behind him.

Much more could be said about these photographs, but the point to underscore here is that each displays a very different social order: One a dim and dying world animated by secrecy and political jealousies; the other a bright and vibrant world, alive to the future and animated by the presumption of political openness and equanimity. The impulse here, no doubt, is to ask: Which, if either, is the real world? Or is it a third version that one finds at the NYT and that seems to sit somewhere between the two? But such questions are dangerously myopic, if for no other reason than the assumption that one photograph is fundamentally more real than the other. Every photograph is a construction, a tool for making (and unmaking) the world that draws upon complex mediating technologies, recognizable conventions of representation and cultural practice, and the inventional skills of photographers and editors. The better questions to ask are how do visual technologies enable the imagination and production of alternate worlds? What do such images reveal—both about the worlds they portray and about us? And what do they (necessarily) hide or obscure? And, perhaps most important, what are the implications of such constructions for the world (or worlds) in which we want to live?Photo Credits: Gerald Herbert/AP Photo, Joyce N. Boghosian/White House Photo

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A few weeks back Hariman made the important point that “shrouds” can work in multiple rhetorical registers, masks that can both restrict and enable agency, sometimes at the same time. The focus there was on how individuals can be literally shrouded. But what about something that can be a little more difficult to put our finger on than a living and breathing, flesh and blood person … something like, say, the “American people”?

Yesterday, President Bush spoke before the Greater Cleveland Partnership, a private sector economic development group. Towards the end of the speech he turned his attention to questions of the war, and on the issue of whether or not to withdraw troops he noted that we should not make any decisions until General Petraeus can give his “assessment of the strategy.” And then this: “That’s what the American people expect. They expect for military people to come back and tell us how the military operations are going.” Now clearly the President is not paying attention to the public opinion polls (unlike so many Senators who supported his policy two months ago and now seem to be jumping ship with thoughts of the next election dancing in their heads), but what about the media? How do they frame the “American people” in all of this?

Over at the Bagnews Michael Shaw has made the very important point that many of the representations of the American public from this event seem to mimic Normal Rockwell’s America. And the point is very well taken. BUT, that’s not the only American public being represented, and there might be an important lesson in attending to the array of representations.

Today’s New York Times story features the following photograph (Jason Reed/Reuters):

Now this is clearly not a Norman Rockwell rendition. Notice, importantly, that the president is not speaking to the folks behind him, who have the look of a jury. Largely male and dressed in jackets and ties for the most part, this is not an easy cross section of the “American people.” They are attentive, intense, but clearly not admiring anything. Like a good jury, they seem to be weighing the evidence. But whoever they are, what do they see?

First, we should attend to the fact that the president is speaking with a microphone conspicuously displayed? Why a microphone? Modern technology doesn’t require it anymore, but no doubt it is a prop that creates more of a “feel” of interaction between speaker and audience. Fair enough. But here, note too how it hints at the need for something to amplify the president’s voice, almost as if the mere fact that the president speaks it is not quite enough to get the message across. But what dominates the image is not the president nor the jury behind him, but the much larger and somewhat ominous audience members he is addressing — the American people? — prominently shrouded in dark shadows. We can’t see them, although we can see what they see. The shadows, of course, function in multiple registers. Because indistinct they make it easy for anyone to identify with — white/black, rich/poor, republican/democrat — and certainly much more so than most Americans can identify with the business class individuals in the background. But not just that, the shroud also implies a certain danger (think “death” shroud) — it is dark, foreboding, and (visually, at least) dominating. The image could be from an Ingmar Bergman film. Shrouded here, the public being addressed is empowered and, apparently, powerful – or at least potentially and threateningly so.

Variations on this photograph have shown up in other places. So, for example, this version from the front page of the Sacremento Bee:

Here, the “jury” has been cropped out. And we see a much more concerned look on the president’s face. The look of concern is reinforced (or framed) by the Secret Service agents prominently displayed behind him. The shrouded public is still there, but now even more ominous. The headline “A New Tone on Iraq” could be referring to the president’s promise to engage in debate over the failures and successes of his Iraq policy, OR it could refer to the changing tone of public attitudes and responses which seem to becoming more and more pronounced with each passing day. But clearly, the public shrouded here is not one to be tarried with, at least not without some attention to the danger lurking in the shadow.

The front page of the Plain Dealer (Lynn Ischay/Plain Dealer) gives us a third option:

It’s not quite the Norman Rockwell shot seen at The Bag or in other places, but it is close. Unlike the picture at The Bag, however, notice that here the president is not blended in with the people behind him. There is a clear distance. And, perhaps more importantly, in contrast to the pictures at the NYT and the Bee, the public being addressed has been visually removed. Now the public is not so much a concern as a ghostly presence that can only be seen in the eyes of the president (and his promise as to “what the American people expect”) or perhaps what now appear to be the somewhat approving eyes of at least of few of his business class jury.

So, we get multiple possibilities. A public who simply gets spoken into existence by the president, and we can believe him or not, or the one he seems to have to address and be accountable to. And the later public is more or less ominous, skeptical and questioning in the NYT image, and downright dangerous in the Sacremento Bee.

How any of this will effect public behavior and response is unclear. But it surely implicates the ways in which we see and are seen as citizens, as “the American people” … and in some measure more powerfully and subtly so than the simple numbers that show up in public opinion polls. After all, seeing is believing …

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I am unable to identify a single iconic photograph that represents the naturalization process for those immigrating to the United States, but it is of course not uncommon to find pictures of immigrants being sworn in as citizens at places like Ellis Island, Independence Hall, Monticello, and at court houses across the country in cities large, medium, and small.

And it all makes a great deal of sense, for while no single photo of this process of becoming a citizen may be iconic in itself (i.e., in the way, say, in which Lange’s “Migrant Mother” singularly marks the Great Depression or Eisenstadt’s “Times Square Kiss” singularly marks the end of World War II and the so-call “return to normalcy”), each such image nonetheless locates the ceremony in physical places that are in their own rights icons of the American imaginary. The ceremony of becoming a citizen is thus linked in such photographs directly to a foundational part of the nation’s coming to be — whether historically or at the present moment.

The on-line version of the July 5, 2007 New York Times offered a new twist on all of this, as it reported on a recent surge in applications for citizenship, accompanied by a picture of some 1,000 new citizens celebrating their naturalized status on Disneyland’s “Main Street” after having been sworn in beneath Cinderella’s Castle:

Being sworn in at Independence Hall or Ellis Island or at some other physical place marker of national legitmacy clearly operates in a somewhat romanticized narrative of American citizenship, and so we should be careful about being too critical here. But surely such places are more real, or at least have more of a connection to who and what we are (or want to be) as a people than the pure fantasy of Cinderella’s castle? Or Disney’s version of “Main Street”? Or maybe not.

In any case, the absurdity of the situation must have quickly registered at the Times, because the picture was shortly removed and replaced by a different photograph. The new image, a cropped version of which was actually part of the original on-line story and the full version which was featured above the fold on the front page of the newspaper (see below), shows a close-up of a group of immigrants in the process of being sworn in as citizens:

What is notable about this newer photograph is not only that the physical place has been visually obscured (even the caption relocates the event, emphasizing that the ceremony took place “near” Cinderella’s Castle, not “at it” as in the original), but nearly all sense of individual difference has been muted or removed, as the new citizens appear more or less “uniform,” wearing identical rain ponchos (the one clear exception, of course, is the poncho bearing an image of Mickey Mouse). And I don’t choose the word “uniform” here randomly, for on the front page of the Times this image is paired with and placed beneath an image (that was also part of the original and now no longer available on-line story) of U.S. Marines being sworn in as citizens … and where else, but in Baghdad!

It is hard to know what is going on here. I would be inclined to say that the original on-line story was a parody, something like what we might find at The Onion: “Citizenship Available for an ‘E Ticket Ride’ at Disneyland!” But the NYT is, after all, “the paper of record,” and we would not expect to find satire of this sort here. And of course the front page story seems to play it straight, even though the visual identification between Disneyland and Baghdad could be read in a subtle but cynical register. But then why does the original image of Main Street, Disneyland disappear from the on-line version? The American imaginary is always something of a fiction, to be sure, but here it seems to have transformed into pure fantasy. And one, it would seem, we are all too willing to buy! Perhaps that’s the point. Or maybe not.

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