Visual Chronicles of a Historic Inauguration

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It was nearly midnight on November 4, in downtown Detroit. Polling places would commence in just a few hours. Approximately 60 percent of Michigan’s votes had already been submitted or sent in—but it was a crucial battleground state, with polls too tight, and varying too significantly, to feel assured about. In the last moments of the campaign, both J.D. Vance and Tim Walz made their appearances. 

Walz’s visit was a brief campaign speech at Hart Plaza, alongside the Detroit riverfront—so brief, in fact, that he couldn’t wait for the Detroit Youth Choir to perform before he took the stage. The audience welcomed him with a thunderous applause. Once he finished, they began heading home. Then the choir proceeded—an all-Black group, established twenty-five years prior, featuring singers aged eight to eighteen, some overcoming familial and community obstacles. They sang to a diminishing crowd. I was the sole photographer who lingered. But I was pleased I stayed—I felt that their situation symbolized the final months of the electoral cycle, and of documenting it as a photojournalist: one must remain until the conclusion to discern what transpires, in order to truly witness the entire event, since frequently the truth is both more intricate and less certain than the expectation. 

On the same day, at the Capitol Theater in Flint, Carol Opalewski, a twenty-five-year-old unemployed single mother of a two-month-old son, traveled half an hour from her residence in Mount Morris to attend Vance’s rally. She expressed that she was voting for Donald Trump. She really enjoyed the event. “Republicans just focus on the facts,” she stated. “They don’t need celebrities to show up, like Beyoncé.”

Twenty-four hours later, Trump secured victory in Michigan, and also the presidency. Today, he is being inaugurated. As a photographer, I have been contemplating recently about the significant role that images have played in his distinctive journey in, out, and back into the White House—and I’ve sought insights from a few colleagues regarding how we perceive this narrative.

Todd Heisler has been working as a staff photographer at the New York Times since 2006, having previously been with Denver’s now-closed Rocky Mountain News, securing Pulitzers at both publications. He has reported on seven presidential elections and nine conventions. “Rhetoric in any campaign period can seem abstract,” he mentioned, “but photojournalists are at the forefront of everything. We cannot fulfill our duties without being present among people, linking and humanizing overarching issues.”

Heisler spent the majority of the 2024 electoral season off the campaign bus—“engaging largely with the influx of migrants in New York City,” he shared. “And I have always examined immigration matters north of the border and their impact on various communities.” But in August, he traveled to Chicago to witness Kamala Harris accept the Democratic nomination. “In any convention, they’re clearly orchestrated,” he noted. “There are moments of genuineness that arise, and that’s what you aim to discover.” He captured a shot of her great-niece Amara Ajagu, framed by her braids from behind, observing Harris onstage. “It was intense,” he recounted. “I realized—okay, this works. I appreciate this frame.”

Submitting the image to his editor was a challenge: at crowded conventions, cellphone and Wi-Fi networks can become inundated. To resolve this, technicians set up temporary Ethernet cables throughout a venue for photographers to directly connect their cameras to servers that editors located backstage, or thousands of miles away, can access instantly. “They adjusted the buffer,” Heisler remembered. “So my cable did not extend precisely where I was. I had to photograph and navigate through a crowd to get as close as possible to the cable, plug it in, and then run back and forth.” At last, the editor texted him, expressing approval of the photograph. Then Heisler returned to his tasks.

It wasn’t until one in the morning, upon reaching his hotel room, that he recognized the image had begun to gain widespread attention. CNN referred to it as a photograph that encapsulated what Harris’s nomination represented for young girls. Michael Shaw, of the photojournalism critique site Reading the Pictures, articulated that “the photo encapsulates the essence of four days of articulated values and aspirations into a singular generational moment and serves as a masterclass in visual interpretation.” The Times’ Instagram post of it amassed over three hundred thousand likes. “Isn’t that what we’re constantly striving for,” Heisler remarked, “to create an image that compels people to take notice? When it truly occurs, it’s remarkable that so many individuals can connect with one of your images.”

Heisler’s photograph accomplished what staged imagery aspires to but often fails: the transmission of an affirmative message marked by the seal of authenticity. I’m certain the Harris campaign was elated with the photograph and may have wished they had produced it themselves. However, if they had, it would have been rightfully condemned as insincere.

Angelina Katsanis illustrated an opposing emotional spectrum. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2023 and has since embarked on her career with internships at Minneapolis’s Star Tribune and Politico. “My background is not rooted in political journalism,” she indicated. “It’s more focused on storytelling and local news.” In October, she traveled to New York to attend the Trump event at Madison Square Garden. Subsequently, she began to overhear conversations suggesting it resembled a Nazi rally.in the identical context, around 1939. “This demonstration was disorderly,” she remarked. “Trump was meandering. His address extended for several hours and diverged into all kinds of different directions.”

At the event, she opted to attempt what appeared to be an appropriate method: she dragged her shutter. “I have set my shutter speed to a very slow rate so that it captures light over an extended duration, recording the movement from the moment I start taking the shot to what unfolds at the conclusion,” she shared. “Trump altered his expression throughout the process of me capturing this image, and I ultimately filed it. It’s somewhat reminiscent of tragedy and comedy masks, like a vibe from Greek theater. I’d like to believe that others noticed this too.” Perhaps it was mere chance, she proposed, “and I can attribute meaning to it afterward, when I’m in the editing stage.”

Weeks later, on the night of the election, Politico dispatched Katsanis to Harris’s watch gathering at Howard University. Ultimately, the photos did not run—because, she stated, “if you have really excellent, positive images of the team that loses and starkly negative images of the team that wins, well, it doesn’t matter how quality the shot is.” Nonetheless, she expressed, “I wish we didn’t swiftly neglect the fact that there was immense joy.” She shared the images instead on her personal Instagram account.

David Butow has operated in numerous nations, documenting conflicts such as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, while dedicating years to capturing global Buddhism. Recently, he has developed an interest in Trumpian politics; his 2021 book, Brink, focused on the initial term. After the election, he anticipated chaos. Time requested him to travel to Florida to document whatever transpired.

The Trump team’s photography policies permitted photographers to capture from a distance of one hundred and twenty feet. “Which is quite a distance, right?” Butow observed. “I realized I would need a long telephoto lens, which I don’t possess. So I had arranged to rent a five-hundred-millimeter lens ahead of time. I meticulously planned everything. The night I arrived, I went straight to FedEx, collected my lens, and then headed to the hotel.”

Trump and Vance spent election night at Mar-a-Lago, followed by a large watch event at the Palm Beach Convention Center. “I considered there was a strong chance I’d be at the losing campaign that evening,” Butow stated. “I began to contemplate what type of images could emerge from such a scenario. If the results came in and it seemed like Harris was going to dominate early, you’d witness a deflated atmosphere. I started to envision what sort of images would capture that sentiment. Then as the evening progressed, it became evident that I would be with the victorious campaign.”

He positioned himself with care. “There are instances when I prefer to take risks and attempt to shoot from a more unconventional angle off to the side for something unique—but this wasn’t one of those scenarios,” he explained. “Considering the significance of the moment, I felt it necessary to play it as safe as possible. Thus, I chose a location directly in front of the stage.” By around midnight, Butow recognized that Trump would proclaim victory. “There wouldn’t be any contest about it,” he recalled thinking. “This could very likely serve as the cover for the magazine. That’s when I truly began to feel the pressure.”

Trump appeared on stage from behind a curtain and approached a podium. “Then he paused, soaking in the admiration and applause for thirty seconds or more,” Butow recounted. “I captured several frames as he relished that moment, just prior to beginning his speech—and that ultimately became the cover image.”

I inquired of Butow regarding the relevance of a Time cover within the extensive media landscape we inhabit now. “The sway of podcasters, social media influencers, and individuals hosting their own shows—I believe that has significantly diminished the significance of traditional journalism,” he responded. “However, in some aspects, it represented a full-circle moment for me, as this is the type of thing that initially drew me to photojournalism back in high school.”

There was another vital image from the campaign, of course: the attempted assassination of Trump in July during a rally in Pennsylvania. The photographs depicting Trump, bloodied from a grazing bullet wound to his ear, defiantly raising his fist as his Secret Service team struggled to shield him, swiftly became definitive of the election. I had hoped to connect with a colleague who had photographed that incident. No one was willing to speak with me about it. For Axios, Aïda Amer gathered photographers’ perspectives, writing that some “worried privately in conversations” that “the images from the rally could transform into a form of ‘photoganda,’ with the Trump campaign leveraging them to advance their agenda, despite the photographers’ intentions of documenting a news event.” She added, “None would comment on the record for fear of jeopardizing future opportunities.”

Every four years, Americans are told that the ongoing presidential election is the “most crucial one of your lifetime.” It’s challenging not to conclude that the photojournalism documenting this past high-stakes cycle—capturing key moment after key moment—contributed to the result. Yet as we commence the second Trump administration, it’s essential to reflect on how we select the images we capture and disseminate. “It seems the American media has overlooked that one of its fundamental responsibilities is to be adversarial to power,” Daniella Zalcman articulated for CJR in November. “Rather than emphasizing what is at stake, we have presented Trump as the strongman poster child for his own political violence.” How photojournalists approach the next four years will be just as vital as the previous eight. Because 2028 will once more be the most significant election of our lifetimes—and the ways Americans perceive themselves will continue to be decisive.

Alan Chin was born and nurtured in New York City’s Chinatown. He is a contributing writer to various publications and an adjunct instructor at the New School and Columbia’s Journalism School. He is also a cofounder of Documenting Detroit, a community-driven photojournalism initiative, and publishes photography books through Jet Age Books.