Serving as a visual post-election year wrap-up, the 92nd Street Y's exhibition "(S)elections: Uncommon Angles and Quiet Moments from the Campaign Trail" provides artsy photo types and political wonks common ground on which to meet. The startlingly intimate glimpses of Barack Obama and John McCain on display invite a spirit of non-partisanship in their humanization of the candidates. Photographers Samantha Appleton and Christopher Morris followed the Obama and McCain campaigns (respectively) and were granted nearly unfettered access.
Both Appelton and Morris are award-winning photo-journalists who have documented their fair share of overseas wars, and the photographs on display bring an embedded eye-of-the-storm intensity in frozen moments that they must have honed in those faraway conflicts.Though the terms of battle were mightily different. As the Weill Gallery, who hosts the exhibition says the candidates were "scrutinized from every possible angle as they churned out speeches, gave interviews, shook hands, kissed babies, and consumed a huge variety of fried food." The gallery will have a reception for the photographers that's open to the public on Wedensday night.
