The Visual Trap of Photographing Protests, and Why Documenting Them Matters
Protests are a visual trap. They seem straightforward to shoot, with hordes of people, colorful signs, high emotions, and a whole buffet of drama, but that’s an illusion.
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Today is the National Walkout Day, so my originally intended post about a new, aggressive photo contract offered to freelance photographers by a major publication will have to wait till next week. Instead, I’m resharing and updating a post about my struggle with photographing protests, which felt more appropriate for the day.
Protests are a visual trap. They seem straightforward to shoot, with hordes of people, colorful signs, high emotions, and a whole buffet of drama, but that’s an illusion. Images of protesters posing with slogans, open-mouthed screams, and clenched fists become redundant fast. The intensity of being in the middle of a crowd gets lost in translation and, more often than not, photos come out repetitive and boring when they should land as impactful. Protests also attract swarms of hungry photographers, many of them circling the same signs and characters, turning it into a game of diminishing returns. My archives are full of dull protest images in varying flavors of outrage, and only in the past couple of years I’ve gotten a bit better at capturing the urgency and energy of those events.
A disclaimer. Even a boring photo of a protest is important because it records and documents, so this isn’t meant to disparage straight documentation in favor of “art,” but to reflect my personal struggle to find a visual language for photographing protests.
The first time I was happy with the protest images I brought back was from the International Women’s Day March in NYC in 2017. In the past, I showed up armed with enthusiasm and little else. The photographs didn’t add up to anything worthwhile, so I learned my lesson: emotional involvement and excitement don’t necessarily correlate with good photos. That time I planned ahead and anticipated the pitfalls. Instead of trying to capture wide crowd shots, I went for unposed individual portraits, and avoided focusing on the signs, using them only as supporting background details. For inspiration, I looked at Alexander Rodchenko, the pioneering Soviet photographer who worked at marches. His portraits are anonymous, devoid of any attempt to present people as individuals, and photographed like bigger-than-life statues, with extreme closeups and a low camera angle. They’re epic and cold.
The nature of a protest is that individuals are consumed by the ethos of a crowd, which starts functioning as a single organism. With that idea in mind, I photographed the women at the march, framed against the vividly blue sky, as archetypes, not individuals. That freed me from trying to capture “moments” or glimpses of personality, as I’ve done in the past, and pushed me toward a series of portraits of protesters who are both isolated from the crowd and embodying its essence.
That protest taught me to pick out the individuals who most effectively translate the mood of a particular gathering. People with the biggest signs or the loudest insignia, who at first glance seem like the main character, don’t necessarily make the strongest impact when photographed. The people in the flashiest attire come to be seen and naturally attract the most attention from photographers. But while some over-the-top costumes can sharpen the message by highlighting the absurdity, focusing entirely on them can flatten the atmosphere into a costume party and dilute the tension of the event. I also like to find people on the edges, those who are not performing for the camera but still carry the zeitgeist in a quieter, more forceful way.
Photographing a protest comes down to teasing out the psychology of a crowd. These images matter because they can build empathy and reinforce solidarity, but they only work when they do more than simply confirm what the viewer already believes. Each event needs its own approach, starting with the nuanced understanding why people have gathered and what they aim to achieve. That kind of attention forces you into flexibility, and it also keeps you honest, because it nudges your photographs away from generic spectacle and toward something that respects why people took to the streets in the first place.
With everything going on now, photographing protests has become an existential rather than artistic exercise. Photographers, previously safe and protected by journalism, have been kicked, beaten, tear gassed, and arrested just for doing their job. And yet they are making remarkable images that shed light on what’s happening in a way that puts me in awe. Please take some time to check out some of the photographers who are out on the frontlines, a frightening word for civil, domestic protests. If I missed anyone shooting out there right now, please leave me their names in the comments.
Is one of the visual traps also usually portraying the police as the "bad guys?" (BTW way I liked your photo with the cop and the protestor in it. It seemed to me to capture a "we're both here together" moment.)
You might also look at the photos of Pierre Lavie, the photographer who caught John Abernathy's Leica when he threw it as ICE agents pinned him down.