Carefully and deliberately composed, it was the shot seen around the world, and it may have helped Trump win the election; naturally, the Pulitzer Prize went to a lesser photo, taken by accident
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Can’t have this
so we’ll go with this
The first picture was incredible and deliberately composed on the fly, the other was purely accidental. One inadvertently showed Trump at his essential best, the other said nothing about the man. So it’s no wonder the Pulitzer was awarded to the latter.
How it happened:
In my head, I just kept saying to myself, 'slow down, slow down. Compose, compose.' Okay, what's gonna happen next? What's going on here? What's going on there? Just trying to get every angle on it.[9]
Composition
Evan Vucci's photographs show Trump moments after he stood up after being shot in the ear during an assassination attempt. His right fist is raised into the air in defiance and blood is streaked across his face. He is surrounded by Secret Service agents on his security detail, one of whom, Sean M. Curran, stares at the camera. A large flag of the United States waves in the background of the photos, in front of a clear blue sky. Trump holds a red MAGA hat that reads "Make America Great Again"—his signature slogan—in his left hand.
In The Conversation, Sara Oscar described numerous elements she said made Vucci's work "such a powerful image": The agents form[ing] a triangular composition that places Trump at the vertex; ... The agent draw[ing] us into the image, he looks back at us, he sees the photographer and therefore, he seems to see us; ... Set against a blue sky, everything else in the image is red, white and navy blue. The trickles of blood falling down Trump's face are echoed in the red stripes of the American flag which aligns with the republican red of the podium."
Philip Kennicott, writing for The Washington Post, described Vucci's photographs as "Densely packed with markers of nationalism and authority" such as "the flag, the blood, the urgent faces of federal agents in dark suits". He described one of the closed-mouth photos as "strongly constructed, with aggressive angles that reflect the chaos and drama of the moment, and a powerful balance of color, all red, white and blue, including the azure sky above and the red-and-white decorative banner below. Trump seems to emerge from within a deconstructed version of its basic colors."
Reception and impact
The photographs of Trump … appeared on the front pages of newspapers across the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Two days after the assassination attempt, Vucci's photos were called "already iconic" Patrick Witty, a former photo editor at Time, The New York Times, and National Geographic, said "Without question, Evan's photo will become the definitive photo from the [assassination] attempt" because it "captures a range of complex details and emotions in one still image".
Fraser Nelson of The Spectator wrote that "[any critic] would have instantly recognised" Vucci's photos as "a once-in-a-generation photograph—an image that will become one of the most potent in American politics and history" and "be remembered as one of the most important political photographs ever taken." He called Vucci's work photojournalism at its most powerful". In The Atlantic, Tyler Austin Harper said Vucci's photos "became immediately legendary", and that "However you feel about the man at its center, it is undeniably one of the great compositions in U.S. photographic history." He said that it was not "an exaggeration to say that the photo is nearly perfect, one captured under extreme duress and that distills the essence of a man in all his contradictions."
British journalist Piers Morgan wrote that Vucci's work was "Already one of the most iconic photographs in American history". Many other journalists expressed similar sentiments; Ashima Grover of Hindustan Times described one of the photos as a "legendary American photo for posterity", and in India Today, Yudhajit Shankar Das anticipated that Vucci's work would be considered a "defining photograph of U.S. history". The Washington Post writer Jeremy Barr also said Vucci's photos were "sure to go down in the pantheon of American photography", while Geordie Gray wrote in The Australian that the photos were "destined to become one of the defining images of our time". Writing for The New Yorker, Benjamin Wallace-Wells said the pictures were "already the indelible image of our era of political crisis and conflict." Discussing how the photographs depicted Trump, he concluded: "It is an image that captures him as he would like to be seen, so perfectly, in fact, that it may outlast all the rest."
Ah, and there’s the rub:
Axios writer Aïda Amer said that notable images by Vucci, Moneymaker, and Mills quickly became known in newsrooms as the "Evan photo", "Anna photo", and "the bullet photo", respectively.Amer also reported that …. "Multiple photographers worried privately that the images from the rally could turn into a kind of 'photoganda'" for Trump's campaign, and that one told her it was "dangerous" for the media to continue using the Vucci photo "despite how good it is", because it was "free P.R. for Trump" that made him a "martyr".
And the photograph the Pulitzer committee decided was the best picture of 2024?
Photographer wins Pulitzer for iconic photo of bullet speeding by Trump's head during assassination attempt
"I just happened to be down, shooting with a wide-angle lens just below the president when he was speaking. There was a huge flag waving right above his head, and I just happened to be taking pictures at the same time," he told "America's Newsroom" in Milwaukee at the time.
"Then, when I heard the pops, I guess I kept hitting on the shutter, and then I saw him reach for his [ear]. He grimaced and grabbed his hand and looked. It was blood, and then he went down, and I thought, 'Dear God, he's been shot,'" he continued.
Mills said the moment he discovered he had captured an image of the bullet whizzing past Trump was a "surprise" to him.
It happened after he was ushered into a tent and began sending photos of Trump's defiant fist pump to an editor.
"I was like, ‘Oh, hell. I remember taking pictures of him when this happened. Let me go back and look.’ I started looking at it. I started sending them right away, and I called one of the editors and said, ‘Please look at these really closely. This might have been near the moment where he was shot,’" he said.
"She called me back like five minutes later and said, 'You won't believe this.' She goes, ‘We actually see a bullet flying behind his head, and I was like, ’Oh my gosh.'"
