Why the photograph of Trump with a raised fist can be held up as a symbol of our age

It is not difficult to recognize the reasons why the photograph of Donald Trump with his fist raised after the bombing (in which an innocent man lost his life, and two other people were seriously injured), a photojournalistic masterpiece by Evan Vucci of the Associated Press, has been a huge success and, according to many, could help the former U.S. president win the election again. The excitement, the triangular composition emphasizing the arm outstretched toward the sky, the understatement that makes the relative a protagonist of the event, and then again Trump’s belligerent expression, the appropriation of a gesture, the clenched fist, historically considered to be in defiance of the authorities and therefore associated with the left and anarchists, the sky of’a clear and clean blue that found itself to be an ideal backdrop for the composition, the presence of the U.S. flag, the trickles of blood on Trump’s face reminiscent of the Stars & Stripes, the agent on the left shielding the president’s body by bending down and almost resembling the figure of a Magdalene inferred from a Deposition of Christ. In the first hours after the bombing, almost every art critic in American newspapers competed to find images in the history of art capable of being called to mind by Vucci’s photograph.

The juxtapositions were the most imaginative, and between Sunday and Monday there seemed to have been a competition to come up with the strangest ones: basically, it was enough to think of a painting or photograph of a historical subject in which there was a flag of any kind, without worrying too much about the lack of relevance to either form or substance. There is reason to believe, however, that Evan Vucci’s photography also lives on its own, without the need to feed on the comparison with the unforgettable shots that punctuate the history of photography, or with paintings that mark pivotal moments in the history of a country, if not of all humanity: the work of the Associated Press chief photographer borders on perfection; it is the result of an enviable ability to foresee, the fruit of decades of experience, which led Vucci to move to where he imagined the right situation for a memorable shot should be built, as well as of ’an extraordinary readiness to seize the right moment, moreover with the camera already set up as best he could, and assuming the appropriate position to give the photograph the dramatic tension that made it the most widely circulated and published image of the attack. Not to mention, of course, Trump’s exceptional instincts and acumen that led him to turn a moment of extreme vulnerability into an incredible moment of strength. All in the space of a few seconds. Just a few seconds to consign to the history of photography an image that has already indelibly marked the U.S. election campaign, that is likely to have a not insignificant impact on the outcome of the election, and that is destined to remain in the collective imagination for a long time. Not least because it is an extremely symbolic photo of the historical moment we are living through.

In the meantime, a preliminary consideration needs to be made: in an age when the preferred medium of expression and communication seems to be video, Vucci’s photograph has shown that the expressive potential of still images is still superior, and by far, to that of moving images. And this is also one of the reasons why those in the arts should question the dissemination of the shot depicting Donald Trump after the bombing. The entire video sequence of the bombing could never manage to condense everything that happened into a single frame : in cases such as these, video has the advantage of offering a detailed and neutral documentation of what happened, but on the other hand, it presents to the relative a narrative that, however impressive and frenetic, is nevertheless diluted. Photography, in contrast (and, especially, photography like Evan Vucci’s), can capture at a single juncture a variety and complexity of emotions that a video usually tends to separate, to bring out with more balance. Consequently, a still image has much more substantial political implications than a video.

For this reason, if there is to be found any historical precedent for the photograph of Trump with his fist raised under the stars and stripes flag, perhaps the closest images are those of the many propaganda posters that characterized the early twentieth century, posters of any political party and produced anywhere in the world, where a figure with a daring attitude was placed under a flag, a banner in which a more or less wide audience tends to recognize itself.

The strength of Donald Trump’s post-bombing photograph lies precisely in this: not in what it tells, but in what it conveys. Yet it is also an image that, at the same time, embodies the post-truth condition that characterizes the time in which we live. An article by Alessia De Luca on theISPI website, published in the aftermath of the attack, opens precisely with some thoughts on Vucci’s gesture and photograph: Summing up, the shot, already “printed on T-shirts and gadgets and repurposed on his [Trump’s] campaign website to urge supporters to donate and unite in a spirit of cohesion and peace,” has already helped redefine Trump’s image. Early analysis suggests that support for the former president is likely to grow, in part because of the photograph of the attack, despite the fact that the image has certainly not changed the political situation in the United States. However, wrote Tyler Austin Harper in The Atlantic, “if Democrats hope to beat Trump and Trumpism, they need to understand the appeal” of this image, which means looking at it “and seeing a promise (which I don’t think Trump can keep, but a promise nonetheless) of tenacity, vitality, and unwavering determination at a time when we are wavering, weak, and undecided in the face of a future that is turning gray.” It was therefore inevitable that this image would reinforce the figure of the former president and help form a narrative such as the one Harper well describes, given the changes brought about by new media, notably social media, and the speed of the content transmission times traveling on contemporary media . Contemporary media that have become spaces for the construction of the real, even more than for the representation of the real, since those same spaces that convey the contents of reality are now not only the same media in which our opinions and judgments about reality are formed, but they move with a speed and with a multiplication of content that was unthinkable even just a few years ago.

The assassination attempt on Trump was accompanied by an exceptional profusion of images, some of them perhaps even more impressive than the one taken by Vucci: for example, the one by Doug Mills, the New York Times photographer who managed to capture the trajectory of the bullet as it flew toward the former president. Or the two photographs by Anna Moneymaker of AFP: in one you see Trump on the ground with an expression of pain, while in the other, as in a Deposition, he is supported by agents and pulled off the stage. Jabin Botsford of the Washington Post’s image of the empty stage, with a shoe on it, is also peculiar. Yet, it was the image of Trump with a raised fist that marked the event more than any other. Doing Google searches with keywords related to the bombing, Vucci’s photograph comes up most insistently, and not only because of its strong aesthetic potential. But also because it has been considered by many to be almost an epitome, for better or for worse, of the existence of this over-the-top character, and therefore, whether one considers oneself his supporter or wears the shoes of his opponent, Vucci’s photograph is the one that best contributes to shaping a particular construction of reality. And if in the age of post-truth, reality is given by the sum of appearance and narrative, then the photograph of Trump with his fist raised can perhaps be considered one of the images that best define this moment in history. It will probably not become shared heritage, like other images that have been associated with it, unless there are consequences that seem unlikely today (such as, say, a presidency under the banner of national harmony, should the tycoon win the election), given that Trump is a highly divisive figure. But the photograph of Trump with a raised fist can already be considered a symbol of the post-truth era.

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