David Colburn

Readers of the Timberjay and other weekly newspapers may not realize it, but every time they open our pages, via the print edition or online, they’re reaching back to the very beginning of journalism as we know it today. The very first modern newspapers were weeklies, due in no small part to the tedious process involved in producing them. Handwritten weekly periodicals appeared in Italy as early as 1566, while those produced with moveable type printing presses began to flourish in the early 1600s. It wasn’t until 1650 that the first daily newspaper was published in Germany.
It seems somewhat fitting, then, that it was a weekly newspaper that ushered in the age of photojournalism. Newspapers and the news industry were forever changed on July 1, 1848 when the weekly French newspaper L’Illustration printed a photo of barricades in the streets of Paris to accompany a story about the June Days uprisings. The image wasn’t the photo itself but was rather an engraving painstakingly reproduced by etching the photo on a wooden block. Photojournalism really came into its own in the early 20th century with advances in both cameras and photo reproduction technology.
It is impossible today to imagine a significant news story that isn’t accompanied by photos that place the reader in the midst of the story itself, conveying as only pictures can, the real-time events, and most importantly, the emotions that accompany them. And those pictures are conveyed to us in real time through video broadcasts and in almost real time by photos than can be uploaded to the internet within moments after capture with a digital camera.
Some images are so impactful that they have changed history. Take two iconic photos from the Vietnam War era as examples. Intensely emotional photos showing Mary Ann Vecchio screaming beside the body of Jeffrey Miller, a student who was shot by the National Guard during a protest at Kent State University, and a young Vietnamese girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, running naked down a road after being severely burned by napalm, intensified and solidified the anti-war sentiment in the U.S. that contributed to the war’s end.
Photojournalists don’t seek to change history, they’re there only to document it, but the potential for an image to shift the perceptions of the public in a meaningful way is always present. Who would argue that the images of George Floyd pinned to the ground by Derek Chauvin’s knee on his neck, taken by a bystander but widely circulated by the press, didn’t inflame the civil unrest that followed? Floyd was surely not the first Black man who died from a fateful encounter with a white officer, but the images made this incident all too real.
This past weekend, Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci was in position to snap what has fast become one of the most iconic photos in American political history, his stunning shot of Donald Trump immediately after his attempted assassination in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
Among all of the photos captured in the stunning moments after the shots were fired, Vucci’s photo is from a photographic standpoint the most perfect of them all. A bloodied but defiant Trump standing in a crowd of Secret Service agents with his fist upraised dominates the foreground, while a waving American flag fills the right third of the photo. The framing of Trump against the deep blue sky between the angular lines of the flagpole and flag couldn’t have been imagined any better if this had been a staged studio shot rather than a candid photo taken in the moment. The Atlantic’s Tyler Austin Harper echoed many of his journalism colleagues, including myself, when he wrote, “However you feel about the man at its center, it is undeniably one of the great compositions in U.S. photographic history.”
And it’s not hyperbole when Philip Kennicott, the senior art and architecture critic for The Washington Post, wrote, “It is a photograph that could change America forever.”
Indeed, within hours after the shooting, the image began popping up on merchandise in online stores, t-shirts, sweatshirts, and mugs galore with captions such as “Bullet Proof,” “Fight,” and “Legends Never Die.” Never mind that Vucci and the AP own the rights to the photo – when has copyright ever gotten in the way of swiping a news photo to make a few bucks? Shirtmakers in China were even getting in on the frenzy.
Beyond galvanizing Trump’s already extreme MAGA base, the image will serve as a rallying point for Republicans throughout the rest of the campaign. It’s all too easy to envision this image being central to a late October/early November get out the vote push for Republicans, and in a tight election where every vote matters, it’s entirely plausible that this image could tip the scales in Trump’s favor, forever changing American history.
And the image takes on even greater significance at a time when the Biden campaign is reeling from the deluge of images showing the president as fragile and bewildered in the aftermath of his disastrous debate performance. Like it or not, Vucci’s image evokes feelings of power, strength, and vitality, qualities Democrats are deeply concerned about with Biden as they consider dumping him for another candidate.
Trump already stood to benefit from the traditional post-convention boost in the polls this week, and the assassination attempt alone will likely amplify that. But you can surely bet that Trump will be shown at the convention with Vucci’s photo as a prominent backdrop, adding to the frenzied excitement of the delegates and potential voters. Going second, the Democratic convention will likely tip the polls back in their nominee’s direction, but with Trump already holding an edge in most polls, will it be enough to make a difference?
It’s said a picture is worth a thousand words. Is this picture worth thousands of votes? Only time will tell, but surely this is an image that won’t disappear for decades to come.