CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/23/2014

Christopher Anderson: Stump

Stump is a thump of a word – blunt, unforgiving in its sound and abruptness. It is what’s left of a severed limb. It is also what politicians do on the campaign trail. They stump. Christopher Anderson’s collection of photographs from the 2008 campaign for president hammers that word over and over again, as his close-up, warts-and-all photographs of politicians fall one after another, bam bam bam, through this lushly printed book. Many of these photographs originally appeared in the New York Times Magazine as the campaign progressed, but to see them again, years later, bound together, is to witness a singular vision of human activity. The faces here – Condoleeza Rice, Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Joe Biden, Chris Christie (pictured here) and so many others, known and anonymous – are presented equally, filling each page. No party affiliation guides Anderson’s camera. Instead he focuses on the actions of the stump. The speaking, the watching, the arguing and the hoping, and most of all, the sheer fleshy humanity of politics. This nearly grotesque objectivity calls to mind the Neue Sachlichkeit of Otto Dix and other German artists in the 1920s. Stump is an unsparing glimpse of human activity, and one of the most compelling photography books of the year. Available at our booth at Paris Photo Los Angeles, opening Thursday, April 24.