Photography and Text by Remy Haber
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Rally ‘Round
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The first thing you notice at a Bernie Sanders rally — apart from the adorable yet terrifying bomb-sniffing dog — is a distinctly earthy smell permeating the venue. It’s the combination of musk, cologne, sweat, and the unmistakable odor of marijuana.
Objectively, this is a strange phenomenon. While we can be sure that the children in the audience can’t identify the illegality of the smell, we can also be sure that the elderly men and women in the auditorium breathe it in perhaps with the slightest bit of amusement and delight.
Mango, the young woman whose blonde dreadlocks are ornamented with tiny plastic peace signs, muses about her unicycle and laments its tragic tale as security simply would not let her bring it in. Jesus strides foot by foot and offers hugs to disabled spectators. And the man in the cheesehead simply won’t wipe that gooey grin off his face.
In every sense of the term, the Bernie Sanders rally is a stage for a cast of both characters and caricatures. They dance and chant and scream and shout, but what is the most impressive of all is that these seemingly infinite moving parts — ones imperfect and jagged — always seem to move together, never in conflict but in harmony.
In this series, I worked to capture what made each character unique: the young boy’s sneakers, Mango’s smile, and not least of all Bernie’s craggy index finger. Their faces and gestures tell a story often left untold by the soundbites from the all-knowing media pundits-turned-gods we imbibe each day, one of a country of individuals who stand together.
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Photography and Text by Remy Haber, Copyright 2016
About The Author: Remy Haber is a senior majoring in History at the University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2016. To read additional articles by Remy Haber go here: https://tonywardstudio.com/blog/remy-haber-south-beach-sugar-free/