Visual Propaganda #2: Leah Renee Monsour's "Voters and Children of the Movement"

Leah Renee Monsour is a New York-based photographer. In 2016, she attended presidential primary rallies of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump around Upstate New York, and was stricken by both the tonal and aesthetic similarities in the voters drawn to the two different candidates. In retrospect, both the Trump and Sanders movements look like a time of political hope. For their brief moments in the political spotlight, it appeared as if working class people might just be able to find some representation of their political will in bourgeois electoral politics. Now, under the Biden administration and a near totalizing power of the security state, political hope is a weakness and nihilism has risen once more.

These images are taken from Monsour’s series Voters and the Children of the Movement, and are presented without clarification and out of order. Unsure of which candidates these subjects support, we are able to remember that populist sentiment as a spiritual force of uplift divorced of clear ideological leanings. – Adam Lehrer

Leah Renee Monsour’s work can be viewed here, and you can follow her on Instagram at @leahreneemonsour