I’m proud to share these 15 images, which the media’s hundred-day photo reviews will likely ignore. Call it a democracy stress test.

By Michael Shaw

My biggest worry over the last twenty years, now worse than ever, is how dangerous it is when wrong becomes normal. Even as the media gets savvier about dealing with limited access and rampant lies, they too often make the crazy seem like business as usual. As we approach the 100-day mark of Trump’s administration, news outlets share many visual lookbacks. But this one is different.

This review shows three types of images that regular media collections likely won’t focus on:

• Enabling/Normalizing: Images that reveal how visual media can become complicit in normalizing abnormal behaviors and policies, whether through framing choices, editorial decisions, or the amplification of propaganda.

• Exposing the Abnormal: Images that cut through propaganda and denial through strong, clear-eyed visual reporting. These photographs capture unfiltered moments where the façade slips or telling actions are plain to see.

• Visual Commentary and Critique: Images—sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious—that comment on the craziness through exaggeration, parody, and humor.

Unlike lists curated for popularity and bravado, the photos here highlight the abuse of power and the damage to democratic norms.

Enabling/Normalizing

Kennedy Center Photo (Doug Mills/NYT)

It’s a picture only a dictator could love. Trump visited the Kennedy Center after disrupting the place, throwing out the board, ousting the president, and making himself chairman. This laudatory Doug Mills shot screams Eva Peron on the balcony, showing Trump in grand command.

Kennedy Center Photo (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Unlike Mills’s portrait, Somodevilla’s wider angle transforms Trump from a commanding presence into a more distant object-like one of those cardboard cutouts of him, dwarfed by space and spotlights. There’s something almost extraterrestrial about the composition: the circular lights hover around this alien like flying saucers. Somodevilla’s compositional license punctures Trump’s self-coronation as Kennedy Center chairman. It’s visual resistance through framing.

Kristi Noem’s El Salvador Prison Performance (Alex Brandon/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

The barbarity is the message. Here’s Noem at El Salvador’s maximum security prison flaunting her $50,000 Rolex while using prisoners as props. The New York Times chief TV critic aptly calls it “The Department of Homeland Publicity” — a reality show that’s “slick, showy, and often cruel.” Media outlets largely defaulted to these propaganda shots while bypassing more revealing images of the staging.

Kristi Noem’s El Salvador Prison Performance (El Salvador Press Presidency Office/Handout)

Many Venezuelan migrants were shipped to this terrorist mega-prison by the U.S. based on tattoos falsely identified as gang-affiliated — some were just Real Madrid soccer team logos. Even more disturbing, 75% of those sent to CECOT by DHS have no criminal record. And how curious that Noem’s photo op framing MS-13 gang members from El Salvador disappears the Venezuelan prisoners shipped to CECOT by the Trump administration?

Besides the bookend cameras screaming out the theatrical humiliation, the handout from the El Salvador President’s office reveals something more terrifying: a guard menacing the prisoners with a rifle.

Musk Salute – The Side Angle (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The image most of us remember is the widely circulated scene: Musk performing his so-called Roman salute before two empty tiers of a blue viewing stand, patterned with rows of white stars. But Sullivan’s rarely seen side-angle exposes the communal context missing from that iconic shot: the audience’s reaction. Whether the applause came before or during the gesture, this perspective captures the MAGA crowd’s tacit approval, laying bare the movement’s racist underpinnings.

Exposing the Abnormal

Rep. Melanie Stansbury’s Protest (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

While many castigated Democrats for their State of the Union pushback (Representative Green with his cane and the paddle signs), this brilliant moment by Rep. Melanie Stansbury deserves extraction from the “Democrats in disarray” storyline. Talk about photo bombing! Stansbury positioned herself strategically at the entrance when Trump entered, creating a perfect split-screen effect. Her sign functions as an asterisk to the proceedings — a visual “caution,” “warning,” “SOS!” to what’s unfolding. A Republican congressperson grabbed this out of her hands moments later and threw it away — a hostile move that only reinforces the power of her visual protest.

Susie Wiles’ Mask Slip (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

This is what it looks like to manage a loose cannon. Susie Wiles — Trump’s chief of staff and head strategist — typically stays behind the scenes and never loses her poker face. This photo captures her during that wild February press conference with Netanyahu, where Trump casually dropped a bombshell about America taking over Gaza, kicking out Palestinians, and building a luxury Mediterranean-style beachfront resort. For Wiles to be caught this publicly off-guard reveals the depth of Trump’s audacity, hyper-impulsivity, and free agency.

Pete Hegseth’s Senate Snub (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

This revealing photo shows Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth arriving to meet Senator Budd during confirmation rounds. These are standard photo ops in normal times—wide-open doors, cozy couch shots. But multiple GOP senators refused to be photographed with the nominee, a man well known for alcohol abuse and his failed management of tiny non-profit veterans organizations. Budd “split the difference”—the door cracked just enough to spy the Hegseths. Republican senators fell in line and voted for him, but wouldn’t be seen with him.

Julie Siegel’s Last Day (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

While Musk lauded DOGE’s “efficiency,” here’s what his meat-cleaver approach to government looks like. Lamarque captures HHS employee Julie Siegel locked out during the overnight “Thursday Massacre” of public health experts. Her face registers that uniquely American shock when institutional guardrails fail, while security guards perform democracy’s new choreography: deny access, confiscate credentials, block cameras. A Stalin-style purge with corporate efficiency—government dismantled not with tanks but with badge readers reprogrammed overnight. One face shows what layoff statistics can’t: the precise moment civil service meets uncivil power.

Trump’s Framed Mugshot (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

Follow the gold. This photo reveals Trump’s New York Post mugshot hanging in a gold frame in the tight passageway outside the Oval Office. This particular entrance leads to the “Outer Oval” — used by White House staff, members of Congress, and friends. Pete Souza noted that the space is too small to put up a picture, but not when it has this effect. As we illustrated in our deeper dive, the gilded framing allows the mugshot to blend seamlessly with historical presidential portraits, elevating a booking photo to presidential portraiture and transforming a criminal indictment into a badge of honor. It creates an intimidating checkpoint — a visual warning at the entrance to the Oval Office that you’re entering a space unbound by norms or limits. Just ask President Zelensky.

Town Hall Anger (Kim Raff for The New York Times)

Why have we read about angry town halls more than we have seen them?

Perhaps because GOP messaging dismisses distressed constituents as “hired Democrats.” Kim Raff’s photo tells a different story — these citizens in MAGA hats attended Representative Hageman’s Wyoming town hall in a district where she won her last race with 75% of the vote. Their steely faces register fury over DOJ cuts, Musk’s influence, and Social Security threats. Visual evidence exposes the inconvenient truth: Republican voters are confronting their representatives.

Visual Commentary and Critique

Tesla Protest (Olga Fedorova/Instagram)

Olga Fedorova’s photo of an arrest outside a Tesla dealership is as sleek as, well, an EV ad. The protester’s face aligns perfectly with the “Plug in, Charge and Go” slogan—ironic commentary as Musk’s DOGE cuts charge through federal agencies, unplugging thousands of workers. A police hat lies abandoned on the showroom floor like discarded democratic norms, while the protester’s defiant expression reveals contempt rather than fear. As Musk’s government efficiency program eliminates career civil servants without oversight, these Tesla dealership protests have created some of the most visually striking acts of resistance.

Columbia Alumni Protest (Alex Kent/Instagram)

Alex Kent’s visceral image shows Columbia’s School of Public Affairs alums ripping their diplomas in protest of campus restrictions and graduate student Mahmoud Khalil’s ICE detainment. Unlike typical protest imagery of crowds and signs, Kent captures a singular moment of personal sacrifice. The compositional artistry lies in the void between torn credentials—that symbolic darkness representing the forsaken years of academic achievement, the institutional fracture, and the violent rupture of our social fabric.

Turning Point Ball (Dina Litovsky for the New York Times Magazine)

I love Dina Litovsky’s work. At Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point inauguration ball, a muzzled guard dog offers the perfect metaphor for this administration: all teeth, barely restrained. The illusion of the socialite holding its leash (actually her phone and dress) creates a tableau of Trumpism’s essential duality—champagne for insiders, attack dogs for everyone else.

The Destruction of Black Lives Matter Plaza (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

Last but not least, “co-witness” the destruction of Black Lives Matter Plaza—a spiteful act nearly buried in Trump’s blitzkrieg of heresies and war on DEI. Not just a demolition but the dismantling of a promise, Jacquelyn’s elegant bird’s-eye view positions us in solidarity with this resident.

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This photo edit inspired an online discussion between me and Dr. David Campbell from VII Photo Foundation. You can watch the full broadcast here.