A camera clicks. In a fraction of a second, the shutter opens and then closes, freezing forever the image in front of it.
When the camera shutter blinked inside a jail in downtown Atlanta on Thursday, it both created and documented a tiny inflection point in American life. Captured for posterity, there was a former president of the United States, for the first time in history, under arrest and captured in the sort of frame more commonly associated with drug dealers or drunken drivers. The trappings of power gone, for that split second.
Some of the 18 others charged with him in Georgia smiled in their booking photos like they were posing for a yearbook. Not Trump. His defiance is palpable, as if he's staring down a nemesis through the lens.Trump facing charges is by now a familiar sight of 2023 to Americans who watched him stand before a judge in a New York courtroom or saw watercolour sketches from the inside of federal courthouses in Miami and Washington, where cameras aren't allowed.
"`Indictment' is a sort of bloodless word. And words are pale compared to images," said Kaplan, a former speechwriter for Vice President Walter Mondale and Hollywood screenwriter."A mug shot is a genre. Its frame is, `This is a deer caught in the headlights. This is the crook being nailed.' It's the walk of shame moment.
Months before he was photographed in Georgia on Thursday evening, his campaign used the prospect of a mug shot as a fundraising opportunity. For $36, anyone can buy a T-shirt with a fake booking photo of Trump and the words"not guilty." Dozens of similar designs are available to purchase online, including many that appeal to Trump's critics.
Recent history is full of politicians seeking political dividends from their booking photos. They've offered large smiles or defiant smirks and tried to make the best of their predicament.
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