Though the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire primary are still months away, several news outlets have already assigned coverage of the race for the Presidential nomination. Photo editors say they won’t choose the photographers who will go on the road with a single candidate until the large field (at press time, there are 19 Democratic candidates still vying for their party’s nomination) has narrowed significantly. In the meantime, news outlets are sending photographers to cover stories that provide insights into the campaigns and voter concerns.

“In addition to covering the candidates, we are also trying to cover the topics that they’re bringing up, key issues around those candidates, their outreach to black voters and to gay voters at pride events and key subjects they’re talking about,” says Corinne Perkins, North American pictures editor at Reuters.



David Williams covered President Trump’s campaign kickoff event for TIME. © David Williams/Redux





After the 2016 Presidential election, critics and the media itself asked how it had underestimated support for the winning candidate. Jim Bourg, editor in charge for Reuters News Pictures in Washington, rejects the idea the media “ignored” voters’ concerns in 2016. During the 2016 campaign, Reuters “transmitted a lot of images of voters that didn’t have any candidates in them,” he notes. “One of the things that struck me is all our coverage of supporters, the buttons they were wearing, the shirts they were wearing, their interactions.” He adds that in this election cycle, coverage of voters is “something we’re working hard to expand upon and do even better.” For a Reuters package called “The Deciders,” about four counties where the 2016 race was decided by 4 percentage points or less, Reuters photographer Brian Snyder has photographed in Maricopa County, Arizona, and Northhampton County, Pennsylvania, capturing slices of local life.

Tanner Curtis, photo editor on the politics desk at The New York Times, says in 2016, “Our lenses were turned on the voters as much as they were turned on the candidates themselves, but I think where we can go from there is make some observations based on, say, the intense passion of Trump supporters.” He says “a takeaway for me” from 2016 is the need for reporting on voters and “just being attuned to how the people are responding to the candidates and their messages, and letting that lead to more reporting.”

Curtis sent photojournalist Jake Naughton to make portraits and do interviews with attendees at the Capital City Pride Fest in Des Moines, where several Democratic candidates were campaigning. The collection of posed portraits was “visually different, and it allowed us to get into the heads of voters as candidates are descending all around them,” he says. Of Naughton, a photojournalist born in the Midwest who has photographed LGBTQ+ communities in Uganda and elsewhere, Curtis says, “I love the way he shoots and I wanted to have his eye and perspective on that,” adding that in choosing photographers “I think it’s important to have a wide perspective.”

Images by Jake Naughton, who interviewed and photographed attendees of the Pride Fest in Des Moines for The New York Times. Photos © Jake Naughton



Showing the Campaign,

Not the Campaign Spin

The challenge during every election cycle is showing how candidates make their pitches to voters, without simply showing orchestrated photo ops.

The New York Times graphics and visuals team recently produced an interactive package called “How to Get a Selfie with Elizabeth Warren in 8 Steps.” With stills, time-lapse video and animated text, the story shows how Elizabeth Warren’s staffers allow every attendee at her campaign events to pose for a cellphone photo with the candidate. Curtis says in planning the package, the Times wanted to dissect the assembly-line system while “showing it in a way that’s not pumping her up.”

Reuters’ Bourg, who has covered ten presidential campaigns, says making “strikingly interesting photos that grab people’s attention” requires an eye for graphic composition and an ability to capture the key moment other photographers miss. Both, he says, require “getting the access.” Cultivating a relationship with a campaign’s communications person “allows you to shoot through an open door for 15 or 30 seconds and get backstage, or step into a position that you need to get an exclusive picture for a few minutes.”



“In addition to covering the candidates, we are also trying to cover the topics they’re bringing up, key issues around those candidates, their outreach to black voters and to gay voters.” — Corinne Perkins, Reuters



Katherine Pomerantz, director of photography at TIME, says, “It’s become more important for us, now that candidates are so constantly visible on social media, that we have that special access. Otherwise we aren’t giving our readers anything special or new.” Voters can see behind-the-scenes, intimate photos every day on candidates’ Instagram feeds. Meanwhile, Pomerantz says, the campaigns’ communication teams are more tightly controlling press access, so it’s harder for publications like TIME to get “that quiet breakfast with the candidate before they start their day.”

In order to give readers photos that feel fresh, Pomerantz says, “We’re looking for photographers that have a unique style they can bring to TIME.”



Staff preparing for the kickoff rally of Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke, photographed by Lucas Jackson of Reuters. Reuters editor Jim Bourg says coverage of voters and candidates’ supporters is “something we’re working hard to expand upon and do even better” in this election cycle. © Lucas Jackson/Reuters





Bringing New Perspectives

Paul Moakley, editor at large for special projects at TIME, says in assigning photography during past Presidential elections, he took inspiration from the color work of Russell Lee and Margaret Bourke-White. “I loved that they had bright flash, they had incredible color, they were revealing everything about the scene in this beautiful, incredible way.” Photographers Landon Nordeman and Natalie Keyssar, who shot the campaign in 2016 for TIME, and Krista Schlueter and David Williams, who have covered campaign events this year, shoot in a similar style. “It’s classic flash photography,” Moakley says. “It’s become a little bit of a way of looking at all the candidates that equalizes them, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans.”

To Curtis, the early days of the campaign cycle provide chances to coach new freelancers with little campaign experience. “Sometimes it’s just about moving them into a campaign space and saying, OK, show me what you can do,” he says. This spring, for example, Philadelphia-based photographer Hannah Yoon shot her first story for Curtis, about voters in Pennsylvania. Curtis says that at this early stage of the campaign, he has time for phone calls with photographers in the field “that I won’t have a year from now.”



“It’s become more important for us, now that candidates are so constantly visible on social media, that we have that special access. Otherwise, we aren’t giving readers anything special or new.” — Katherine Pomerantz, TIME



Moakley notes that while visual style is important, “I’m always wanting the photographer to find stories in the pictures.” When a photographer pulls back to show the mechanics of a photo op, Moakley says, it should serve a story. “What are they trying to show? What is the energy like around the [candidate]? What are the crowd sizes really like? Or is it to show whether someone has some high-budget production because the campaign is doing incredibly well?”

He also wants to see a sense of place. Moakley says when Pomerantz and other TIME editors discuss how to cover news—on politics and other topics— “a lot of the conversation has been about: Whose voices are we listening to?”

Maintaining credibility

in a hyper-partisan world

The 2020 campaign is beginning at a time when, as Moakley observes, “Our profession has been called into question and this horrible idea of fake news is out there.”

To avoid accusations of bias, the Times has adopted a policy that staffers can’t use social media to express political opinions. “Before I hire someone [a freelancer], I try to check what they’re posting on Instagram and Twitter, [looking for] anything that reads as biased or one-sided,” Curtis says. “I don’t want anything that can mess with our credibility. There are people who I can’t hire because they’ve made a choice to speak out on social media.”

In the current climate, Curtis says, “I accept that everything we do is under

a microscope.”

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What Photo Editors Want from Photographers Now



Year in Review: How the Photo Industry Reacted to a Challenging Year



Politico’s Creative Director on Using Photography to Deliver Political News