While the visual media has played it mostly straight over the past sixteen days, recording the comings and goings of GOP lawmakers like the rituals of Capitol Hill still made sense, photographer Mark Peterson has felt no such constraint. Using Instagram as his method of dissemination, only the fizzling end to the insurrection has allowed reality to caught up to Mark’s imagery. According to his note:

Looking for events around the political cliff, I started (photographing) on Sept 10th at a event at the Capitol that was called “Exempt Obamacare”. It was staged by the Tea Party with speakers Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. I really played with the images making them animated and black-and-white to call attention to the political theatre taking place.

A low budget noir epic or a revival meeting on acid? David Lynch directs GOP ’16, perhaps? The images have a garishness and a perversity that’s almost Sci-Fi. At the same time, there is an antiquated quality here, reflecting the movies of the silent era when body language — and hysteria — counted for so much more.

Because the public doesn’t quite have a fix on Cruz, by the way, Peterson’s postulations are especially interesting. It seems Mark casts him as a cross between Jerry Falwell and Chicken Little.

Two thoughts: Sarah Palin’s is such a mouth. And the shutdown was so bizarre, it actually normalized the brief re-emergence of Governor Kryptonite over a couple of days.

The Undertaker?

Parody aside, however, Paul could probably use a more granular going over.

Finally, perhaps the lowest episode of the low involved the far right’s exploitation of veterans at the WWII Memorial. That one of them could have been the shutdown’s poster child, carrying a flag and a smirk, is shameful for all of us.

Let’s just say, Peterson understood the picture from the beginning.

Visit Mark’s website here and follow his Instagram feed @markpetersonpixs.