The other night, I came home from work to find my wife busily preparing our son’s dinner. Running the risk of a wooden spoon to the back of the nonce, I nagged at her to take a break and look at a photo on my phone. She looked at me suspiciously. I knew what she was thinking: this will either be something funny, something gross that he thinks is funny or something expensive he’s bought for himself. Our marriage hung on this little image on my phone’s screen...
In fact, it was none of the above. It was a simple photo of a vulnerable looking African-American man, a little grey around the temple, sitting alone in an empty bus and looking pensively out the window. He had the fragility of someone tired from carrying a great weight. The art deco chrome and green leather interior of the vehicle, meanwhile, suggested that this was no ordinary modern mass-transit commuter coach.
“Wow,” my wife said, “That’s Barrack Obama. Where is he?”
I replied, “He’s visiting a museum in the US. That bus is the bus that Rosa Parks was travelling on the day she was told to give up her seat for a white person and get down the back. That is probably the very seat she was sitting in.”
I watched my wife intently. I knew she had read the Rosa Parks biography. Her eyes welled. I could see the hairs on her arms and neck stand up as if to give an ovation. She was speechless, locked in a gaze with this extraordinary image and its bitter-sweet symbolism. My marriage was safe, for now.
After the emotion had subsided, I got to thinking: why don’t we ever see such inspirational images of Australian politicians? We have our share of photographers, emotive issues, struggles and publicity-hungry pollies in this country. Surely, there must be some defining images of critical political moments?
I did some research.
What I found was that so much of political imagery is defined by conflict or is contrived, poorly. There is an absence of “beautiful moments” in our political visual library – those images that perfectly capture the human characteristics of a leader, a struggle or a movement; images that speak to something beneath the surface. Having realised this gap, it is impossible to stop teasing at it (like trying to stop scratching a mosquito bite you’ve just noticed). I kept looking and kept asking: why does this gap exist? Inexorably, I found myself draw to the conclusion that perhaps it’s because there is nothing there to see – nothing beneath the surface. Perhaps we suffer from a hollow politics that signifies nothing beyond itself. A politics devoid of inspiration. Conflict or the contrived.
I researched further and further. Slowly, there started to emerge images that had some pulse-quickening story of their own. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Australian politics could inspire. The evidence speaks for itself...
Of course, when you talk of emotive issues in Australian politics, one man and one moment looms larger than all. Gough. The beautiful indignity and defiance, and the trail-blazing silver quiff, captured for all time:
But some images transcend your personal preferences (political or otherwise). No other image starts my heart-to-beating more than this classic:
Other images speak to us because they reveal the human-side of those from whom we are too often distanced. The following image, to me, captures the dignity and poise of our most humanist of political leaders:
Images that reveal tragedy also capture my imagination ... and there is nothing more tragic than the figure of the fly helplessly caught in the web:
Sometimes we’re just inspired by the reassurance of our place in the world. Even today, many Australians would take comfort and strength from this striking image, as they discuss the problems with foreigners, the blacks and the gays:
But, finally, my search came to end. I had found it. An image that captures the depth and significance of Australian politics. An image that speaks with a voice at once human and majestic in its ability to inspire. The beautiful moment that reminds us that politics does matter and that it can bring out the best in us all .... [fades to static]
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