How a – not für ungut – politician who is only moderately endowed with charisma, more like Otto Normalverbraucher’s mediocrity, suddenly turns into a pop star in my mind’s eye, awakening the memory of David Bowie in his Rebel Rebel-years. It happened on September 6, a weekday Wednesday, in the Bundestag in Berlin, where German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was defending the 2024 budget. Part of a generally, I estimate, not very swinging, long-term debate with cutbacks as the main menu.
Hundreds of photos were taken on Tuesday of the Chancellor, who appeared in public with scratches on his face and a patch over his right eye after an accident while jogging at the weekend. While the chairman of parliament ensures that the meeting proceeds in an orderly manner, press photographers are keenly aware of everything that deviates from or disrupts the daily order in the political arena: Scholz with an eye patch is a textbook example of this.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Arno Haijtema is editor of de Volkskrant and writes, among other things, about photography and the way in which news photos determine our worldview.
A matter of good timing is the inclusion of EPA photographer Filip Singer. The sunlight that falls theatrically through the dome at the top of the Reichstag on the politician at the pulpit: it accentuates the leading role he plays as head of government. And it also offers Singer the opportunity to do away with the messy and boring background of glassy-eyed, listening politicians, their tables with microphones, glasses of water and papers. The full light causes the aperture, the pupil in the camera’s eye, to narrow into a tiny hole, causing the underexposed decor to disappear into black. This is how Scholz gets the stage. The cloth becomes one with the darkness that surrounds him: as if it were a black hole in the head into which his surroundings disappear.
The fascinating thing about such an eye patch is that it becomes impossible for the viewer to look at the politician with a neutral gaze. And photographers know that, which is why they turned the lens on Scholz en masse and frequently. The eye patch puts our imagination to work. In the most childish version we associate him with a pirate, those with a sense of history may think back to the Israeli soldier and statesman Moshe Dayan, the pop lover to Bowie. And we all want to know: what is hidden behind that mini curtain?
The patch controls our emotions and prejudices. I alternately saw photos of Scholz that gave him something devious, almost mean. And others in which he actually arouses endearment, especially the first photos of his new appearance, if he has not yet completely shed his embarrassment. I know, nothing but prejudices, based on appearances that shouldn’t matter. But they still play their role, especially in the political theater. Glasses (minister Sigrid Kaag), a Superdry shirt instead of a three-piece suit (former CDA leader Wopke Hoekstra), striking shoes (minister Hugo de Jonge) and a light-up hairstyle (MP Geert Wilders): they burn themselves into us collective memory. But the ambiguity of the eye patch is everything.
Scholz took advantage of his bonus appearance with a good-natured message on X, formerly Twitter: ‘I’m tense about those Memes. Thank you for your good wishes, you will be happy with it, as it is!‘ There were indeed plenty of those memes on X. It would not surprise me if a Dutch politician in electoral distress tries to use similar visual means to thrust himself into the center of attention in the run-up to November 22.