Showing posts with label bill clinton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bill clinton. Show all posts
Bill Clinton: Time Lapse Photography
The 42nd President, William Jefferson Clinton, is on the cover of a magazine this week (NYT Magazine, depicting Clinton as a lion in winter). The photographer and the editor chose an interesting portrait to grace the magazine cover (click it to enlarge). It alludes to a famous photograph of Clinton, done for Esquire in December 2000, as he was leaving office. Dark suit, white shirt, buttoned up with a nicely tied pastel tie; stark, empty background; subject is/appears seated. This portrait garnered criticism at the time, with some pundits claiming it was a sexually charged image and that the reader enjoys an (ahem) unusual perspective.
Comparing the two photographs, you see a man aging and a man whose glory days have passed. The multiple heart bypass operations, and the strain of playing an indispensable supporting role for his wife during the interminable 2008 campaign, have taken a toll. Cinton looks more dignified, but less vital. You expect that the more recent photograph, showing Clinton standing, one leg forward, to be the more vital. Instead, the Esquire photograph, which depicts Clinton seated, has a feeling of strength. Clinton's hands have been described as unusually large and he's famous for glad-handing and touching (zing). In the Esquire photograph, they dominate the photograph and suggesting power and ability, but on the NYT Mag cover he shields them behind his crossed arms (possibly because of the tremors described in the NY Times article).The Esquire photo remains, in my mind, the best image of a Clinton archtype: polished, successful, ambition radiating from the lighting, but still a little vulgar and human. Esquire revisited the image a couple years later, with Halle Berry (note that the camera angle has changed).
In all, it is an interesting decision by the NY Times Magazine to explicitly compare the present Clinton to a more potent image of him at the tail end of his presidency. Lion in winter, indeed.
