The Brooklyn Rail

Iconic photographs become so when they fit into an existing iconography of previous historic images that is already familiar to us, that we’ve seen before and remember. Looking at Evan Vucci’s image of Donald Trump after the attempted assassination in Pennsylvania, we recall other powerful images of American defiance and resolve under fire and under the flag, like George Washington crossing the Delaware and marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima.

There are no extraneous elements in this image. Donald Trump dominates the image in the very center, with his fist raised high and his determined face lined with blood like war paint. The photo is shot from below, with a stable pyramidal structure and two wings to balance and extend the composition: the long arm reaching in from the right to steady the candidate, and the robotic teleprompter leaning in from the left, no longer needed. Trump’s raised arm and the Secret Service agent’s extended horizontal arm form a right angle to frame Trump’s face, the face of another Secret Service agent looking directly at the viewer but masked in dark glasses, and that curiously suspended American flag, seemingly held aloft by Trump, fluttering in a cloudless azure sky. A couple of loyal rally-goers are glimpsed in miniature at the very bottom of the frame, next to Trump’s left hand, grasping his bloodied red MAGA cap. Almost everything in the image is red, white, or blue, except for the neutral machinic gray of the mocking teleprompter and the blacked-out eyes of the principal witness.

This one still image will have more impact and staying power than hours and hours of rally videos and cellphone videos posted online, because it both stops and extends time, giving us time to concentrate on it and to reflect on its meaning. It makes a statement that is coherent and forceful, but not unambiguous. In the current image and information environment, that is a rarity, so much so that this image comes as a surprise.

It is an image of American strength and resilience, yes, but also vulnerability and sacrifice, as the female and male agents behind Trump almost cheerfully offer their own bodies as shields against the lethal bullets that may still come, and the other two agents selflessly and rather frantically search for safety and escape for their charge. All four of the agents are willing to die for this. The flag above them is reversed and upended, like the one flown over Justice Alito’s house as a symbol of distress. The more one looks at this image, the more distress is revealed.

What, exactly, are they doing there? Dying to make an image? Who is being served by this image? And who is serving it? The man in the dark glasses, looking directly at the photographer while Trump gazes off into space and strikes a pose, may well be asking.

When an iconic image reduces and focuses an event like this, it often occludes other crucial facts. In this case, the first of these facts is that two people died that day at the rally in Butler: the hapless would-be assassin and an innocent citizen attending the rally with his family. And two other rally-goers were critically injured, all by the shooter on the roof.

Obviously, viewers on the Right and the Left, politically, will have very different responses to this iconic image, which is as it should be. As the great filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard always said, “This is not a just image. This is just an image.” Images will always be utilized in different ways by different people with clashing ideas and politics. Images don’t have a politics, per se. They are used by political actors, to support their divergent views. And images almost always appear surrounded by words, the eternal antagonists of images.

Donald Trump’s first instinctual impulse, after clutching at his ear and ducking for cover, was to stand up straight, pump his fist to the crowd, and exhort them to “Fight! Fight! Fight!” which has become his signature gesture. But what does the gesture mean? The man’s instinct for making images is preternatural and persistent. It came through in his mug shot heard round the world and in many other instances.

Trump’s followers fervently believe that Trump has been “under fire” by the Liberal elites for some time now, in elaborate attempts to silence him (and thus, them), and this image will almost certainly be seen by them to verify and further reinforce their views about that and their abiding hope that Trump will ultimately triumph and vanquish all his foes. Their belief in him (and both images and politics are primarily about belief) will be amply buttressed by this image.

This brilliant iconic image will certainly energize his supporters on the eve of his coronation in Milwaukee, and Trump consequently now has a great deal of momentum and leverage going into the convention. And for those who see Trump in messianic terms, he has now been baptized in blood and in the image. But what will the future bring?