It's too blunt to claim that the camera never lies - perspective can be deceptive, after all - but Nate Gowdy's eyewitness images of the January 6 storming of the Capitol tell an infinitely more reliable truth than the narratives "recasting insurrection as resurrection" that have since emerged. Those narratives have been validated by Trump's pardons and the subsequent release of "J6 Patriots".
Little wonder that Gowdy is bewildered by what has transpired - and the fact that MAGA meatheads are now legitimately back in the building. As he wrote in a piece for Columbia Journalism Review, photojournalism may be a beleaguered profession but retains a vital role as a bulwark against revisionism and propaganda: "My photographs document a moment when democracy teetered, the nation's timeline itself an active crime scene. As newsrooms contract and misinformation swells, independent journalists stand at the breach - not just to preserve truths that others reject, but to ensure the past isn't rewritten to fit the present. The pardons don't just forgive, they endorse, transforming accountability into proof of persecution. Without our work, this chapter, too, will be lacquered in sepia and sold as heritage."
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