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Wednesday, May 22, 2013
April 20, 2010

Nina Berman Looking at the Tea Party

<p><span style="font-size: small;">Opening up with the daft, Halloween side of the Party, we have the umpteenth permutation on &#8220;Obama the Narcissist.&#8221; Juxtaposed with the laughing granny, it showcases the thrill of mocking. Clicking though, however, you&#8217;ll see that Nina goes deeper than that. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">This second picture captures the real signature of this Tea Party phenomenon &#8212; the mixed-metaphor.</span> <span style="font-size: small;">The racist Mr. Joker and Mrs. Clown Joker-Riddler, with that stick on backwards, are the perfect complement to the yellow &#8220;Don&#8217;t Tread On Me,&#8221; the flag forming its own montage with three hot dog signs, and then what looks like one in the guy&#8217;s hand. It&#8217;s as if the photo is playing with how the Tea Party rallies jumble all kinds of different symbols together. Hot Dogs. Government out of control. You get it, don&#8217;t you?</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">Yes, we have Big Paranoid Guy with his little flag giving us the evil eye. And the two guys with their big guts and their little flags. But the photo is not about making fun.</span> <span style="font-size: medium;">Because, looking at the facial expressions, you don&#8217;t just see how sure these guys are, but also how much they just need to believe in something. As well, the boy &#8212; who is &#8220;out front&#8221; of the other men &#8212; seems a lot more open and uncertain, his shirt suggesting how easy it is to be a tiger on the surface.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">But what makes this series is the guy in the suit.</span> <span style="font-size: small;"> If he&#8217;s otherwise the smiling guy in the barber chair, or the upbeat host at the Toastmasters meeting, or the funny one when he and the guys get together for a round of golf, on the other side of the &#8220;dividing line&#8221; from all the HOCUS P.O.T.U.S., we see (in him, and the others) head-hanging fear, and sadness, and weariness, and exhaustion, and regret, and yes, of course, the suspicion and anger inside that suit over what&#8217;s happening to our country.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">Yes, the guy in the suit seems a lot less vulnerable in this last photo. But then, he&#8217;s sharing the company, and the energy, of other angry white men, making a stand in defense of their monument, and their right to be loud.</span></p>

Yes, the guy in the suit seems a lot less vulnerable in this last photo. But then, he’s sharing the company, and the energy, of other angry white men, making a stand in defense of their monument, and their right to be loud.

What’s smart and, yes, respectful about Nina Berman’s Tea Party photos is that they aren’t taking the Tea Party any more or less seriously than the party’s frustrations, on the one hand, and their antics, on the other.

–Michael Shaw

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  • DennisQ

    Most of the people in the pictures are ordinary looking, but there are a couple of guys who see themselves as Soldiers of Destiny. Their demeanor is intended to be intimidating, but they’re too old and out of shape to be a real threat. The other folks seem to be there on a lark. It’s a nice Spring day and it’s good to get out and do something.

    I don’t think anything is really going on here. Guys who’ve been left behind show up to make believe they’ve still got it. The rest of them are cranky that the news on the news isn’t about them any more. The Tea Party is an association looking for a purpose or even, for that matter, a leader.

    Alexis de Tocqueville remarked that Americans join things for the sake of joining things. Unlike the dark furtive secret societies of Europe, Tocqueville said, American societies are open, benevolent and friendly.

  • Fuzzykisser

    You missed a bet by making the type color grey – black would have been a much better way of discouraging people to read it.
    The idea of having the pictures “flash on” as you cursor over it is also helpful.

    I.E. Needs work.

  • rich sodergren

    i`m struck by the children in those pictures. i think they have`t a clue to what is really going on. they must have been brought there by their parent or parents as if it was some learning experience or some great historical event.

    it was a sad day for our country and it`s future.

    • mjfgates

      Children are always a little clueless at political events. What could they know, besides what their parents tell them? It’s perhaps the least creepy thing about these rallies. If the kids had expressions more like the maddened adults, I’d be nervous.

  • Sam Jack

    The Joker of “The Dark Knight” was an anarchist if he was anything. Mostly he was a psychopath, and psychopathy and socialism don’t exactly go hand-in-hand. Why dress up Obama as the Joker and then label him a socialist?

    • http://ralfast.wordpress Rafaelq

      To demonize him. Obama as “destroyer of worlds”, their world.

  • Linda

    Please use a more regular light background. This is very hard for most people to read.

  • Mike Kearns

    Nice try…I’m a graphic artist and I use photo manipulation software all the time. The lighting on your angry white male doesn’t jive with the rest of the photo. The lighting on everyone else is soft and coming from the right, whereas on the man you want us to believe was there, it is harsh, from behind and slightly to the left of our point of view.

    • http://www.ninaberman.com Nina

      An off camera strobe was used in several of the images. However, there was no post production manipulation. The man was most definitely there and he appears in another frame in the series.

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