A powerful photograph that could change America forever

Before talking about images, talk about reality. One person is dead, two others are critically injured, and American political life is more dangerous today than it was yesterday. Former president Donald Trump was wounded in the right ear and will recover; the body politic was wounded far more deeply, and the prognosis isn’t clear. We don’t yet know the motivation of the shooter, but it seems the threshold between violent rhetoric and violent action has been breached once again, and every time it is crossed, the crossing gets easier.

There is another reality added to all of that: Evan Vucci’s photograph for the Associated Press of Trump in the immediate aftermath of a shooting at a Pennsylvania political rally. Trump is seen with blood on his face, his right arm raised to pump a fist at the crowd while the American flag streams above his head. Independent of how this photograph is read and interpreted, it is strongly constructed, with aggressive angles that reflect the chaos and drama of the moment, and a powerful balance of color, all red, white and blue, including the azure sky above and the red-and-white decorative banner below. Trump seems to emerge from within a deconstructed version of its basic colors.

It is a photograph that could change America forever.

Vucci’s photo will create a reality more real than reality, transforming the chaos and messiness of a few moments of peril onstage in Pennsylvania into a surpassing icon of Trump’s courage, resolve and heroism. Densely packed with markers of nationalism and authority — the flag, the blood, the urgent faces of federal agents in dark suits — it will encourage some of the darkest forces in American civic life. People who preach violence, who revel in its political potential, can now say that one of their own is a victim, and he was. From that, more cycles of violence are almost inevitable.

Political violence can only degrade democracy, never advance it, and this photograph is painful proof of that corrosive power.

Vucci’s photograph distills and refines the basic themes of Trump’s political career into a single, explosive image. America is a dangerous place, and this image confirms that.

Blood is essential to Trump’s rhetoric, with its contrast between red-blooded patriots and the polluted blood of outsiders, or immigrants. The former species of blood, the right kind, the one he shares with his followers, is now visible, and all its symbolic power instantiated in the image of Trump raising his fist to the crowd.

Almost from the beginning of photography, the medium has been entwined metaphorically and actually with violence. We say we shoot photographs like we shoot a gun, though photographers do not always prefer the analogy. Photographs give us power; guns give us power. The camera is reflexively drawn to scenes of violence, and photographs freeze those moments, often killing our ability to analyze them dispassionately.

One can say two things of this moment: His devotion to his crowd is unshakable; his devotion to the camera is also absolute. It wasn’t a wise thing to do, given that he couldn’t be sure there was only one shooter in the crowd.

Near-death experiences, especially if they’re violent, change people. Some are transformed, returned to life with new appreciation for its fragility, reanimated with gratitude, love and the power of forgiveness. Others turn bitter, angry and resolute. We don’t know how this will change Trump, whether he will be the same man he was Saturday, or a new one. As always, we watch him as we watch the television, movies or videos on social media. What’s next, and what now?

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