God Bless Damon Winter

God bless Damon Winter for this brilliantly timed surgical strike on political romanticism at that point in the campaign where the faithful are never more so, most everyone else is climbing off the fence, and political junkies everywhere are on a binge diet of pols and their manic crowds. Adding the hyperbolic touch of the split room (split screens currently the rage), we get to share in the recessed knowledge that campaigning and engaging the public is ultimately a dirty business requiring constant re-sanitization.

With photographers constantly worried about finding insightful angles on this interminable marathon, Winter avails himself of a tool in the toolbox that he makes look simple but is otherwise not easy to use. It’s called: unexaggerated honesty.

(photo: Damon Winter/The New York Times. caption: Mr. Obama got a squirt of hand sanitizer from a White House trip adviser Marvin Nicholson after shaking hands and posing for photos with a line of supporters backstage before he spoke at the Cleveland State University. October 5th, 2012.)