Just a squib to direct you to Errol Morris’s piece on pool photographs of GW Bush. Mainly it’s striking how generic they are, how déjà vues — though chosen by three photographers, scenes are repeated, one especially familiar one three times — until you get to the last one, three in a row snapped after Bush’s farewell address, capturing something in his face I had never seen before.
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The Edge of the American West 
16 comments
January 27, 2009 at 1:08 am
Sifu Tweety Fish
capturing something in his face I had never seen before
His true nature, one might argue.
January 27, 2009 at 3:34 am
A White Bear
I am sort of amazed by how frequently Bush compounds a boner by making that schlemiel face he does so readily.
January 27, 2009 at 4:38 am
kid bitzer
if there is one lie from the bush years that i would most like to change, it is that bush was “obstinate” or “stubborn”.
these descriptions are sometimes used in criticism of him, but they still convey too much praise. and they also simply misdescribe him.
he was not stubborn. he was simply paralyzed. terrified.
a deer in the headlights of history.
he “stayed the course” because he was too scared to think.
there will be many more photos like those last three surfacing in the next years.
January 27, 2009 at 5:29 am
Adam Roberts
Are you allowed to plural up “déjà vu” like that? Looks weird to me.
January 27, 2009 at 5:38 am
Ahistoricality
That reminds me of my favorite administration photo….. Not a Bush photo, but I agree that the list of photos is surprisingly narrow.
That said, they were asked about iconic and enduring images, not “your favorite” or “most drunken” or “image you couldn’t get past your editor”….
They left out Bush playing guitar or having cake with McCain while New Orleans drowned…
January 27, 2009 at 7:25 am
jazzbumpa
IMHO, “deja vues” is brilliant. Especially so in this context.
I agree with kid, sort of. Bush’s inability to think is not categorically different from his obstinacy. It is its proximate cause.
I always said Bush wouldn’t change his mind, if he had one.
What a tragedy that this severely limited, unthinking, intellectually lazy, venial man was at the helm for eight long, miserable years.
The very last picture is so evocative of Richard Nixon.
January 27, 2009 at 8:34 am
Vance
My French is pretty weak — all I meant was the ordinary, dismissive sense of “already seen”, i.e. overly familiar (and fem. pl. for “les photos”).
a deer in the headlights
In that last group, his face actually expresses fear/insecurity/regret, or something — more often we see “deer in the headlights” in the sense of blankness, as when Andy Card whispers in his ear on 9/11.
January 27, 2009 at 9:05 am
Russell Belding
Re: the last photos, I think there may be a slight dose of self-pity behind those hastily-wiped-away tears, too.
January 27, 2009 at 9:14 am
Dr J
Errol Morris seems incapable of producing anything–a film, a book, a blog entry–that doesn’t force me to think as hard as I can possibly think. Thanks for pointing me to this one.
January 27, 2009 at 9:53 am
ben
Errol Morris sure does ask tendentious questions. (Twice so far, though admittedly with two different people, he’s brought up the Bush regret thing in connection with photographs rather than reality.)
January 27, 2009 at 10:02 am
ben
more often we see “deer in the headlights” in the sense of blankness, as when Andy Card whispers in his ear on 9/11.
Honestly, this is the only kind of face I can imagine being made in that situation.
January 27, 2009 at 10:12 am
Vance
Tendentious and (at least in this case) unproductively so. He didn’t get the photographers to say anything “damning”.
And I’m with you, ben, at 10:02 as well — there’s nothing in his expression in that moment, and there’s nothing wrong with that. (The photographers claim to be able to read something there, but I think they’re kidding themselves.)
January 27, 2009 at 10:18 am
dana
There seems to be something wrong with imputing overly specific mental states to images in photographs, especially when they’re of people whose public image is overly managed.
January 27, 2009 at 10:46 am
Russell Belding
We don’t know (and perhaps don’t want to know) Bush’s true thoughts or emotional states at the time a picture is taken (or any other time, for that matter), and I plead guilty to speculating, without even a Psych 101 course in my own background. And, we shouldn’t follow Noonan’s Law (i.e., it would be irresponsible not to speculate), or diagnose by videotape, a la Frist. That said, you can’t watch a guy in guarded and unguarded moments for eight years (even if it’s just on the TV), and not develop at least an inkling of what might be going on behind his eyes.
January 27, 2009 at 12:33 pm
kid bitzer
“especially when they’re of people whose public image is overly managed”
well, sure: that’s why i don’t impute “steely resolve” to bush when looking at one of the photos that was overly managed to make him look full of steely resolve.
but those last three photos were *not* overly managed. those are pictures behind the curtain. and i think that they put us in a good position to make conjectures about his mental state at the time they were taken.
oh–and i think of deer in the headlights as experiencing, and as seeming to experience, terror and blind panic, rather than blankness. (i’ve just got more terrifying headlights than you do, that’s all). so my “d.i.t.h.” is consistent with your “fear/insecurity/regret”.
January 27, 2009 at 8:09 pm
andrew
There seems to be something wrong with imputing overly specific mental states to images in photographs
A few years ago, Slate had a fascinating discussion of interpretations of a photo of people in Brooklyn sitting with the smoke rising from the World Trade Center Towers in the background.