BAGnewsNotes

Visual Politics: China Quake

I'm in NYC this week attending the NYPhoto Festival as well as the VII agency seminar, so I might be a bit briefer over the next few days.

One thing I'm thinking about is how the visual earthquake coverage simultaneously distracts from and sustains the running pre-Olympic China criticism.  The image above -- ostensibly just another crisis picture, and part of the wave that pushed pro-Tibet demonstrations and Beijing's ecological problems out of the media eye -- can't help but serve as a replacement, raising questions about China's hyper-industrialization and it's humanitarian cost.

What strikes me about the "missing" snapshot is the extent to which it is identifiable by type -- especially here in New York.  After 9/11, one does not look at this image and wonder, at least right away, about the fate of the couple so much as one wonders which disaster it is this time.

NYT China quake slide show -- (May 15, 08)
In Departure, China Invites Outside Help (NYT)

(image 1: David Gray/Reuters. Dujiangyan. image 2: Andy Wong/Associated Deyang. Press via nytimes.com)

Obama-Edwards: Just A Convention(al) Photo

Beyond the smart timing -- a day after the washout in W. Virginia -- it's hard to believe the true blue O-team wasn't playing for this exact pose. 

Besides stoking the fantasies of those working class Edwards fans (are you looking, Kentucky?), the campaign even got Drudge, if you can believe it, to deliver the money caption.

Ex-Rival Edwards Throws His Support to Obama (NYT)
Why Did John Edwards Endorse Obama Today? Thread V (Talk Left)

(image: Jeff Haynes/Reuters. Grand Rapids, Michigan, May 14, 2008. via YahooNews)

Your Turn: McCain's Stowaway

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I'm curious how you read  this shot that ran on the AP wire about two weeks ago.

It's a scene aboard Air McCain, with Mac doing his customary press schmoozing.   Coincident to that, we have Arianna Huffington doing her cable news thing on the small screen.  The way she physically parallels McCain in the image is interesting, as is her proximity and relationship to the (main stream) reporters.  (By the way, this shot preceded the firestorm Huffington started over McCain's 2000 presidential vote by three days.)

I especially like how the image captures the different political platforms and "talk streams" in play this year, not to mention Huffington's tenacity in, once again (see video), finding her way onto McCain's radar.

(image Mary Altaffer/AP.  Phoenix. May 2, 2008)

Hung Over In Mississippi

On one hand, it's a fairly run-of-the-mill newswire shot.  For an Administration that has made its name on the strategic use of signs, slogans and symbolism, however, I think it's cleverly fateful.

The pic was shot Monday, the day before the GOP -- running hard against Obama in Mississippi (and hitting all the racial keys) -- lost still another special Congressional election.

You could say that the fact Davis lost to Childers -- after the Administration has so damaged the party -- can be directly hung over Cheney's head.  Looked at dimensionally, with the stars-and-stripe behind the sign, the photo also suggests that while Cheney/Bush continue to soak up the limelight, the '08 Republican slate -- in the fuzzy state that it is -- is now awkwardly caught between the Administration and the republic.

Democrats Capture Deep-Red Mississippi House Seat (TPM)

Republican Election Losses Stir Fall Fears (NYT)

(image: Rogelio V. Solis/AP.  Southaven, Miss. May 12, 2008)

I'm Sure Smirky's Golf Game Wasn't That Hard To Cut Loose

(before de Mello)

(after de Mello)

President Bush said yesterday that he gave up golfing in 2003 "in solidarity" with the families of soldiers who were dying in Iraq, concluding that it was "just not worth it anymore" to play the sport in a time of war.

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf," Bush said in a White House interview with the Politico. "I feel I owe it to the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

-- Bush Says He's Not A Golfer In Wartime (WAPO - May 14, 2008)

In light of the disclosure above, I think most people will look at this White House shot from May 5, 2007 and simply make the argument that Bush views golf as a sport and cycling as physical fitness.  That was, after all, the circumstance of this White House pic.

Knowing Bush, however, and the avid biker he's become (1, 2), I think the reason he has forsaken golf is not because he feels it's inappropriate so much as because of the immediate shame he felt having been caught on the golf course at the wrong moment.

As WAPO goes on:

Bush said he decided to stop playing golf on Aug. 19, 2003, when a truck bomb in Baghdad killed U.N. special representative Sergio Vieira de Mello and more than a dozen others.

He said he received word of the attack while playing golf during a stay at the family ranch near Crawford, Tex. Press reports at the time indicate he took the call from Condoleezza Rice, then his national security adviser.

"They pulled me off the golf course, and I said it's just not worth it anymore to do," Bush said in yesterday's interview.

Just like he never felt any need for collective sacrifice, it is just not in Bush's make-up to have made this decision in the broader context of "the appropriate behavior to set in wartime."  (If that was the case, then how would one explain the multitude of examples -- such as this one or this one -- where Bush, in the most public of wartime settings, has acted like a complete goof ball?)

No, being the concrete and stubborn guy he is, there just is not much difference in Bush's cocky pre-war, adolescent manner and the wartime manner he brings to everything, including replacement forms of recreation, such as fishing and biking.  It's the same smirky smirk.

Perhaps the jolt he received actually broke through Dubya's otherwise impermeable wall of denial.  Between truly examining his larger, gung-ho attitude toward the war, however, and adopting the gesture (just between him and himself) of jettisoning his golf game, I'm sure the golf wasn't that hard to cut loose.

(image 1: J. Scott Applewhite -- AP via WAPO.  image 2: Joyce Boghosian/White House. May 5, 2007.  Beltsville, Md. whitehouse.gov)

The West Virginia Numbers

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Heading into today's primary in W. Virginia, the focus in the 'sphere has been on Appalachia, race and demographics.  Steve Benen's post ("Why will Obama get trounced in West Virginia and Kentucky?") does a nice round-up looking at poll numbers, as well as leading pieces by George Packer, the LAT and Jerome Singer.  And then, there's this extended geographic analysis by DHinMI at DKos which argues that Obama's so-called problem with white working class voters might have a lot more to do with that swath of America known as Appalachia.

With this kind of focus, it's hard not to look at the newswire images of Clinton and Obama in West Virginia and not to attend to the racial breakdown. 

In a particularly symbolic visual, NYT photographer Stephen Crowley captured this shot at Tudor's Biscuit World in Charleston.  In the photo, Hillary Clinton heads into the restaurant for a photo op with Evelyn Keener, 91, who is waiting with a copy of Clinton's autobiography.  At the same time, the picture captures a black couple at the next table, the woman wearing an Obama 08 jersey.  (Afterward, as you can see in this AP shot by Elise Amendola, Clinton has a word with, and also a gander at the presidential endorsement of an embarrassed Doris Smith who said she had no idea Clinton was going to be there.)

Still, I found the image above (from yesterday's Clinton rally at a gym at the Fairmont, West Virginia airport) that much more effective in speaking to the demographics.  In this case, it was not just the crowd ratio I found compelling, or the social spacing, or the body language of the Obama supporters, but the element of the numbered bleacher seats. 

(image: unattributed.  Getty Images by AFP. Fairmont, West Virginia. May 12, 2008. via daylife.com)

Jenna's Blessed Wedding

Yes, thanks for the messages about Jenna's wedding.

The setting sun, combined with GDub on the periphery, combined with the wise (and, perhaps, only) choice of holding the wedding at 28%'s retirement home picks up on the sense that Bush can't get out of D.C. fast enough.

I also agree, the scale of the cross is very weird.  Does anyone know if it's now a permanent fixture of the "Prairie Chapel Ranch?"  (If nothing else, it's surely a visual vestige of the born-again nonsense -- and church vs. state blurring -- the country has had to put up with for the good part of a decade.)

Anyway, here's the full White House slide show.  Hope they had a private photographer, also, and the pics weren't all on the taxpayer's nickel.

Your Turn: Indiana

This was shot about a week ago at a Clinton rally at Indiana Tech.  It makes me think how, over the past four or five months, I've tried to remain more or less impartial in the Democratic race, and how I seem to have lost that battle of late.

I guess the children are standing in front of a window?  I like how it splits between inside and outside, pink and green, child and adult, female and male, emotional versus architectural. 

Mostly though, I'm interested in all you see here. 

(Photo: Damon Winter/The New York Times.  May 2008.  Indiana.  nytimes.com)

John and Cindy's 2000 Vote: The Matter Of The Children

There was an interesting moment in Thursday's interview with Cindy McCain on the TODAY Show, especially in light of the intense buzz surrounding whether the McCains actually voted for Bush in 2000.  (This, in addition to Arianna Huffington's psychological take-down of Mac's hyena-like denial in front of O'Reilly.)

Referring to negative campaigning, the TODAY Show's Ann Curry asked Cindy McCain:

"It's six months to go before the election.  Are you prepared for the next six months knowing that that's how it generally does go?"

If you watch the interview, McCain is mostly breezy, sometimes firm, but at this particular point, you can see the emotion in her eyes.  (The screen shot comes immediately after Curry says: "prepared for the next six months.")

McCain answered: "Well, I'm never ready for those kinds of things..." then added, "especially when it involves my children."

For a mother, given that the attacks involved her daughter, Bridget, it is not surprising she would answer the question that way.  However, if such feelings remain this live and close to the surface eight years later, could the sting be that separate and distinct from hard feelings toward Bush/Rove for perpetrating the attacks?

Following the interview, Curry told co-anchor Meredith Vieira she had asked McCain about charges she hadn't voted for Bush in 2000, and that McCain told here it wasn't true.  Cindy McCain's pain here, however, makes it that much harder to believe that the attacks and her 2000 vote could be that exclusive of one another.

TODAY interview with Cindy McCain (video - MSNBC)
Cindy McCain ‘shocked, appalled’ about Myanmar (TODAY - MSNBC)

(screen shot: TODAY Show, via msnbc.msn.com)

Low Stimulus

In an effort to literally get out in front on the stimulus rebate, Cheney poses with the Director of the Philadelphia Regional Financial Center in Philadelphia.  Between this shot, and the other White House pic of Cheney (sans glasses, seeming to scrutinize a stimulus check), the whole exercise feels really depressing.

Because the economic picture -- including galloping food and gasoline prices, mortgage foreclosures, and the like -- doesn't typically lend itself to vivid news imagery, it's something we're all feeling now without much chance to address it here.  This cavernous warehouse of rebate checks, however, seems to do a good job of conceptualizing the gloom.

Besides the endless monotony of battleship grey (sort of a monochromatic reminder of how much money the war on terror has siphoned off), all that empty shelving, and floor space without a worker in sight, seems to not just telegraph fewer shoppers in stores, but a lot fewer workers.

(image: David Bohrer/White House.  Philadelphia. May 8, 2008. whitehouse.gov)

Iraq Civil War #10 - Day 44

Like this image posted back on March 27th (two days after Maliki declared war on the al-Sadr and the Mahdi), what lends poignancy to a situation we have otherwise grown numb to are pictures that are this elemental.

In the latest evolution of the Shiite civil war, American forces -- with the support of troops from the U.S.-installed, pro-Iranian government  -- have so traumatized Sadr City that a mass exodus would surely take place (similar to the previous migration out of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities) if only the people, now trapped and starving, could get out.

This woman's hands gripping onto a truck while waiting for food supplies to be distributed not only powerfully reflect the circumstance in Sadr City, their expression and adornment offer an anguished and detailed personal portrait as well.

accompanying article: Aid Officials Urge Relief For Baghdad Slum (Reuters via NYT)
BNN Iraq Civil War thread
NYT Pictures of the Day, May 8 (nytimes.com)

(Photo: Petr David Josek/AP. May 2008. Sadr City. via nytimes.com)

The BAG Prepares For The Second Coming (Of Obama-Mania)

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Back in the cold of January, when Alan Chin was up in New Hampshire shooting for TheBAG, he and I had absolutely no clue whether, come fall, the Obama story -- still electrified at that moment by the post-Iowa buzz -- was going to play out more like this or this.

Fast forward two months, and Alan (having spent another overnight on the lip of the Ohio primary, developing film) sends me the shot above as part of a basket of pictures.  Of course, I dismissed it immediately.  "And what didn't you like about the Kennedy-esque one?" Alan asked the next morning from a roadside Bob's Big Boy somewhere, I think, between Columbus and Cleveland.  And in phrasing it that way, he pegged the source of my problem, knowing that, as dramatic an image as he had recorded, it in no way reflected how a struggling Team Obama had given up the pep rally in favor of the townhall.  (And so, this is the "more representative" pic I went with.)

But today, today.

Today, just 24 hours after the results from Indiana and North Carolina, at the moment at which the Democratic race apparently reached its tipping point, I saw as quick and dramatic a flip in the visual tone as I've ever seen before.  For the past few week, Obama has been largely portrayed in tandem with his controversial former pastor, or with not the friendliest looking white blue-collar workers, or standing alone on both the literal and metaphorical "other side of the tracks."  Looking at the images flying off the wire the past few hours, however, it seems suddenly like none of those other moments and picture were ever made.

So, before turning the focus to the return of Obama-mania and the visual media's tilt-on-the-dime purification, glorification and idolization of the man who just a few days ago was fighting the shadows, I felt (although it's hardly a digitally-appropriate description) like dusting off that Ohio image.

Our Man in Ohio (March 08 - Alan Chin on the campaign trail for BAGnewsNotes)
Our Man in New Hampshire (January 08 - Alan Chin on the campaign trail for BAGnewsNotes)

(image: ©Alan Chin. Westerville, Ohio, outside Columbus. March 2, 2008.  Used by permission)