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The tens of millions of viewers who’ve watched the Democratic National Convention on television have consumed a seamless, high-energy, high-definition product to match the enthusiasm of a revived campaign: the paeans to Joe Biden; the rousing speeches by Michelle and Barack Obama, who left the audience with more than a dose of nostalgia for 2008; the pep talk by Tim Walz, to rally Democrats like he would a football team down by three in the fourth quarter; a confident and forceful performance from Kamala Harris, surrounded by what looked like two dozen family members as balloons fell from the sky.
Photographs by Natalie Keyssar, by contrast, give us a glimpse from inside the United Center that’s more ambiguous, confusing, and, therefore, more true to both the event itself and the moment we find ourselves in. Many of Keyssar’s images are blurry and disorienting. In one, we see Biden through a scratched-up display. Barack Obama walks up to the lectern with swagger and a sly smile that says he knows his speech will kill. Hillary Clinton holds forth on the jumbotron, one more layer away from everyone in the Convention hall.
I talked with Keyssar about being at the Convention. “You’re constantly bumping into Hillary and Kamala, and, you know, there goes Buttigieg, which is very surreal because these people who are seen as icons are suddenly in human scale,” she said. “But I have this feeling, which I’m trying to convey in the photography, that, despite the fact that I am seeing them physically in front of me, I don’t feel like I’m actually seeing the person. I’m still seeing the icon.”
Keyssar’s images also seemed to speak to the uncertainty of the trajectory of the race, the Democratic Party, and of our country more broadly. Harris didn’t become a candidate in the usual way, at the usual time. Now she has just a little more than two months to tell Americans who she is and what she’ll stand for, even as her opponents are working to define her for their own ends. Will she aim for the same border restrictions as Donald Trump and Joe Biden, or will she back policies favored by immigrant-rights activists? Will Harris take a different tack than Biden to the war in Gaza, or will her approach be the same? Will Biden’s economic policies shape hers, or will she go in her own direction? Also, is this still the Party that Obama led, or is it something else, forced to change in response both to Trumpism and these fraught times when very little, including the existence of the United States for another two hundred and fifty years, feels like a sure bet?
Keyssar captures the crossroads at which we find ourselves by training her sights on Democrats young and old. Sometimes the younger Democrats bring new energy—wearing their “Red for Ed” and “Not Another Bomb” buttons, texting away on their phones—and sometimes they’re exhausted, with drowsy eyes, crossed arms, and legs resting on empty chairs. Unlike Party leaders, these Democrats down on the Convention floor are in clear focus. “The shots of people in the crowd, I’m with them,” Keyssar said. “I wanted those to be sharp.”
Keyssar also accentuates the expensive, hectic, heavily mediated nature of the Convention. In addition to the jumbotrons, there are the thousands of television cameras, television screens, photographers’ cameras, smartphones, microphones, lights, teleprompters, speakers, and cables, all designed to enhance the sensory experiences of listeners and watchers inside the Convention hall and thousands of miles away. They make possible the gloss and the glitz, and the sense of enthusiasm and momentum, which the Democratic Party hopes will carry them from the Convention to Election Day. Keyssar gives us something different. “I’m leaning into looser and more imperfect images than usual, because the product that I’m shooting is so glossy,” she said. “I’m trying to throw some aesthetic sense of questioning into that experience, to be a glitch between the viewer and the show.”
Sourse: newyorker.com
