On January 20th, 2021, I stood on the press risers at the Presidential Inauguration in Washington, DC, photographing Joe Biden taking the oath of office. It had already been a busy and chaotic month. Two weeks prior, I’d stood on these same press risers making photos as tear gas clouded the air and violent insurrectionists broke through overwhelmed police lines to gain entrance to the Capitol. The dissonance between these two events was head-spinning.
When Senator Joe Biden won the election, I proposed a photo essay to
Politico to document the first 100 days of the new administration and its effect on the city. I had previously done a similar story for them four years earlier that had run over 22 pages in