Breaking away from the pack

A shot of the crowd at a Bernie Sanders campaign event March 12 on the U. of I. campus, taken by journalism professor Charles Ledford and later published in the Wall Street Journal. While working for various major news organizations as a young photojournalist, I learned that, like the Empire, political campaigns are hierarchical, monolithic and narcissistic organizations. They're run like the Death Star, and their media strategy is based on rules of engagement set by the campaigns and tilted overwhelmingly in their favor. Photographers enter only with press credentials through a dedicated doorway and are often restricted to a perimeter area. Or they are forced to shoot from a riser in the rear of the room with long telephoto lenses while standing shoulder-to-shoulder with one another. One way the campaigns try to control the message is by making the messengers so homogenous. My approach to covering the 2016 presidential primaries in Iowa and Illinois for Getty Images was not unlike the Star Wars rebels' strategy for successfully attacking the Death Star - I was the small one-man fighter the candidates' media apparatus doesn't really plan for.