We keep looking at that photograph: Trump’s fist bump, his scowl, the blood on his ear. We who support Trump, and we who oppose him. We mock it. We regret it. We put it on T-shirts. We make it into memes. We don’t stop looking.
It reminds me, in mood if not in form, of a strangely beautiful Monsieur magazine cover from 2012. An elegantly dressed man and woman in 1930’s attire sit sipping champagne while Paris burns around them. “While the world ends,” the translated caption reads, “the party continues.” It’s an evocative image because it speaks to deeply human conflicting desires: for beauty, for safety, and for an interesting life — maelstrom viewed from a distance of security. The end of the world, toasted with champagne. The end of the end of history. It’s a kind of icon of chaos: pointing to a sense both that anything could happen, and that anything will always be rendered to us as art.
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