Joe Flood

Tag: photography

  • Trump-Epstein Friendship Statue Returns to the National Mall

    Joe Flood
    October 4, 2025

    In this wretched dystopia, the one thing that we can be thankful for is that enemies of freedom are clumsy, dumb and incompetent.

    A group of artists, the Secret Handshake, placed a statue of Trump and Epstein on the National Mall celebrating their friendship. Called “Best Friends Forever,” it depicted the two men holding hands in honor of Friendship Month. Gold, garish and hollow, it was a perfect representation of the shameless corruption of the regime.

    The friendship statue fit into the grand tradition of satiric art. We’re a country where you can make fun of our leaders – or we used to be.

    The National Parks Service (NPS) issued a permit for it. But then once it popped up in the news, they revoked the permit and hauled the statue away in a pre-dawn raid.

    Famously unresponsive, they gave no reason for the removal but then said it was too big before finally telling the artists that they were never getting another permit again.

    As they tossed the statue into the back of a truck, NPS broke it, too, smashing into pieces, like the vandals that they are. This is the agency that is charged with protecting our heritage.

    Trashing the Trump-Epstein Friendship Statue wasn’t their only act of creative destruction. They also trashed another permitted event, the FLARE anti-Trump vigil outside Union Station. This was a collection of tents, information stations and a stage. Again, in the dead of night, the regime raided it, destroyed it and tossed the remains into the back of a truck.

    The cause was a Charlie Kirk imitator who triggered a woman in a mental health crisis into attacking him. He got the viral video he wanted, as well as donations and White House attention. She wasn’t part of FLARE but the Park Police used this as an excuse to shut them down.

    In 2022, I send multiple emails to NPS about the 1776 Restoration Movement, a right-wing group that camped out on the Mall for an entire month with kids sleeping in vehicles, open gas cans and a poop bucket as they called for the violent overthrow of the government. NPS never even responded to me.

    When the Trump-Epstein Friendship Statue was removed, I emailed NPS to know why. They are public servants and part of their job is responding to the public. Of course, I heard nothing back from them.

    The good news is that artists are creative and art has a way of routing around censorship. The friendship statue was memorialized on Wikipedia. And the plans for it were placed online, so anyone could 3D print their own copy of the statue.

    And with notice and no explanation from NPS, the Trump-Epstein statue “Best Friends Forever” returned to the National Mall.

    It’s a little beat up. You can see where NPS broke it in pieces and damaged the inscriptions.

    But it’s become Washington’s hottest new tourist destination. And with the government shut down, and the museums closing soon, it may be Washington’s only tourist destination.

  • Exposed DC 2022 Brings Art to an Alley

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    I will go to any event in an alley.

    The Exposed DC 2022 Photography Show features unique visions of Washington, DC. Not the postcard DC, but the real city beyond the monuments as captured by the people who live and work here.

    I’ve had photos in the show in the past and love it. I’m fascinated at how different people can look at the same landmarks or events and come up with completely different visions.

    This year’s show is in a Mount Pleasant alley. Steps from a taqueria and a laundromat, you’ll find 36 photos of the DC region reproduced as sturdy metal prints.

    Seeing photos of Washington while you’re standing outside in Washington adds a gritty realism to the experience, making you realize that these aren’t just pretty pictures but depictions of very real people and places in the nation’s capital.

    Go see Exposed DC 2022. Since it’s outside, you can visit any time of the day or night until the show closes on July 24.

  • 36 Images of DC at Exposed DC 2021

    me and my photo at Exposed DC
    Me and my photo at Exposed DC

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    Go see 36 images of DC from local photographers (including me) at the Exposed DC 2021 Photography Show.

    Now in its 15th year, this outdoor exhibit of photos can be found in the alley next to Ellē restaurant at 3221 Mt Pleasant St NW.

    My photo is of Cupid’s Undie Run, in which people race around the streets in their skimpies to raise money for charity. I took the photo in February 2020, just weeks before the pandemic struck.

    During the dark days of covid, I’d go days without talking to another human, my only interaction with others at a distance, our mouths covered. It was surreal to look at photographs like this, with people not wearing masks or much else. It gave me hope to see humans doing something great together. Very together!

    Exposed DC is one of my favorite things about Washington. I’ve been in the show before but what I love about it is all the different photographic takes on the city. I always discover places to visit and new ways of seeing DC from the show.

    Check out these unique visions of our nation’s capital at the Exposed DC 2021 show until July 11. Free and in an alley – how cool is that?

  • Exposed DC: A Photographic Record of a Crazy Year

    What a long strange year it’s been.

    That was my thought looking at the 14th Annual Exposed DC Photography Show.

    I’ve had photos in the show twice before. I was in the very first one in 2007 and again in 2012.

    The annual Exposed DC show is always an interesting snapshot of the times, illustrating what life is like in Washington, DC.

    In 2019, the Nationals won the World Series, an Apollo rocket took off from the Mall and Gilead came to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. They’re all captured in the exhibit, as well as much quieter and more domestic moments, photographers finding beauty in the simplest of compositions, like a kitchen sink in light that is just right.

    A couple of the photographers in the show recently spoke about street photography . Geoff Livingston is a storyteller that who looks for dramatic moments. His winning photo – Scoot Down the Highway – depicts an electric scooter rider in light and shadow. It’s an image which makes sense in 2019 but would seem like science fiction if it was in an earlier show.

    Mukul Ranjan is not afraid to get up close and personal. His photo of three women in a convertible is more than just an image, it depicts a relationship between the photographer and subjects. Aware of his presence, they’re smiling for him, knowing that they look great and wanting him to capture this late-afternoon moment. His street photography advice is simple: get closer.

    If I had to explain to someone what they missed in DC in 2019, I’d take them to the Exposed DC Photography Show. Full of feeling, the photos share what it was like to be alive in Washington during this tumultuous time.

    Exposed DC Photography Show – 14th Annual Exhibition
     – Touchstone Gallery 
    901 New York Avenue Northwest
    Washington, DC, 20001
    United States (map)

     

  • Eight Life Lessons Learned, 2010 – 2019

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    The world has been turned upside down since 2010. This crazy decade has taught me eight invaluable life lessons.

    1. If you don’t do politics, politics is going to do you.
    2. Your most interesting times will be the worst.
    3. You can bike in any kind of weather. Snow, rain, polar vortex. Doesn’t matter. Humans are designed for this.
    4. Read that book. Reading is the best use of your leisure time.
    5. Write that book! Creating art has its own rewards.
    6. Don’t try to monetize your hobby.
    7. If you’re healthy, appreciate that. If not, endure.
    8. We’re not here forever. Go to that party, hug that friend, take that cheesy sunset photo.

  • New article: Seven Reasons to Join a Photo Collective

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    Sweating and gulping beer, I watched Steph tap dance in a nearly empty apartment building on the edge of downtown DC. The structure was going to be gutted and gentrified but first one last party on a steamy summer evening. No need to worry about the neighbors because there were no neighbors – everyone else in the building had moved out.

    And I owe it all to photography. I met Steph through InstagramDC, a community for photographers in Washington, DC. We get together for instameets, happy hours and other events – it’s a photo collective.

    Which is why I wrote Seven Reasons to Join a Photo Collective for Submittable.

    Through a collective like InstagramDC you can expand your skills, pool talents and, most importantly, meet new people. If you’re creative, inspiration comes from new experiences, such as watching a friend tap dance on a sweaty evening in an abandoned building.

  • Published! Five Tips for a Better Weather Photo

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    I have a new article in The Washington Post – Five Tips for a Better Weather Photo!

    In this listicle for the Capital Weather Gang, I share my tips for creating a good weather photo. It’s about composition, knowing your camera, including people, getting out of the car and telling a weather story.

    The photo editor included lots of bike photos – that’s what I’m known for as a photographer. A bike is also how I get around the city and am able to capture so much interesting imagery.

    I’m a huge Capital Weather Gang fan. It’s the best part of the paper, IMHO. I was glad to share my knowledge with their readers.

  • Instagram is a Lie Factory

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    On my way to brunch, I saw a pair of vultures.

    They were in the middle of the street, fighting over a rat carcass. A car honked but they did not move, consumed by their struggle.

    I’m a compulsive photographer. Not a day goes by where I don’t take a photo of something and share it on Instagram.

    I loved Instagram when it first began. While there were similar photo apps, Instagram was a community, allowing me a look into the lives and visions of people around the world.

    It was more than just an online app. I met great friends through InstagramDC, local photographers like me who share a passion for mobile photography.

    It felt real. Excited by this new medium, people created images of things that meant something to them. They experimented. They grew.

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    You were excited when people you respected liked your photo, the heart providing a bit of virtual recognition.

    The other apps fell away and Instagram exploded. Suddenly, it was not a niche tool used by insta-photographers but something that everyone had on their iPhone.

    There were top ten lists in magazines. Who were the best Instagrammers in DC? Find out!

    Companies ran contests. Take a photo, share it, and you could win a trip!

     

    View this post on Instagram

     

    The Poutinerie is open! Get a taste of Canada at Dupont Circle @aircanada #aircanadafliesthere #contest #poutine #canada

    A post shared by Joe Flood (@joeflood) on

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    Marketing firms put together lists of influencers. Want to get the word out about your new restaurant? Reach out to these food photographers. Give them drinks and they’ll post photos of your place online.

    I’m guilty. I went to those meals, bewitched by the chance to be cool.

    The fun photo app that was Instagram became a marketing tool for big brands, a new way to get advertisements in front of eyeballs, a digital method to drive conspicuous consumption.

    But this one was sneaky. We know how to ignore banner ads on web sites, glossy ads in magazines, commercials blaring during timeouts. But how do you ignore marketing messages that look like Instagram posts?

    Is that travel photographer you follow being paid for her fabulous adventures? She gushed about a hotel. Is her post a paid ad or an uncompensated review?

    Everyone got in on it, even me. I was a Brand Ambassador, paid to take day trips around the DC region. I loved it. Would do it again.

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    Enterprise CarShare followed the FTC’s Endorsement Guides, which required that I put #ad #sponsored on my post. Not every company is so scrupulous.

    And would you notice a #sponsored in a hundred other hashtags? Social media marketing is virtually unregulated, with the difference between legitimate post and a compensated one nearly impossible for consumers to determine.

    But that’s not the only deceit.

    You see a beautiful plate of pasta on Instagram, bolognese bright against a white plate. What you don’t see is the time carefully arranging the noodles, wiping off the mess, setting up the tripod for the DSLR, softening the scene with a lightbox and then editing the photos in Photoshop.

    Instagram is all about the likes now, an online popularity contest, the hell of high school duplicated in cyberspace.

    In response to virtual rewards, we lie and present curated lives, our fears hidden by bright images of an idealized life.

     

    View this post on Instagram

     

    The LEGO takeover has begun #lego #bikedc #lincolnmemorial

    A post shared by Joe Flood (@joeflood) on

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    “You have what I want,” someone told me. “You just ride bikes and drink beer.”

    But that’s not true. Like much of America, I’ve had a lousy couple of years, a fact that I’ve largely kept to myself (I’m from the Midwest), my social media feed showing little evidence of crushing anxiety and depression.

    One of the creators of Instagram quit the app, after seeing what Facebook did after purchasing the online photo service. Instagram become a celebrity-driven marketplace engineered to sap users’ time and attention at the cost of their well-being. The community she nourished from birth become merely another profit center for the online leviathan.

    Facebook scaled Instagram and monetized it, filling it with ads and content that looks like ads, while committing unknowable violations of privacy and decency along the way, anything, even treason, to keep the Silicon Valley machine growing.

    Instagram is a lie factory. The photos aren’t real, the users aren’t honest and the company deceitful.

    Yet, I still use it and love it. Is this due to my passion for photography or the virtual rewards I receive? Is it about the photos or the likes?

    I took a photo of a pair of vultures fighting over a rat carcass. I did not share it on Instagram. It did not fit my brand, my carefully curated life of bikes and beer.

    The answer is there. Like millions of other Americans, Instagram to me is not about photography, it’s about the likes.

  • Walking Away from Democracy

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    The rain, sadly, ended in time for the Walk Away pro-Trump rally in Washington, DC.

    Supposedly a group of ex-Democrats who had “walked away” from the party, they gathered, a couple hundred of them, on the concrete expanse of Freedom Plaza.

    The Florida bomber wasn’t mentioned. Nor the Pittsburgh shooter. Instead, they complained that they were the victims, renounced by friends and family for “walking away” from liberalism.

    Over and over, speakers claimed that they weren’t racist, to a very white and old crowd. I have never seen so much vaping in DC. One woman said that she couldn’t be racist because she had a black husband and a black baby.

    “You won’t see this picture on the mainstream media!” she shouted in front of a collage of portraits of people in the movement, steps away from the Press tent, where the media could check in. Trumpkins desperately want coverage from the media that they scorn.

    Political group demonstrates in DC isn’t news, especially if there’s only a couple hundred of them. This is a city which has seen anti-Trump demonstrators by the millions.

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    Another speaker bragged of his ignorance. He only got the news from Twitter, as a couple circulated through the crowd holding a “Q” in red, white and blue. It’s the right’s favorite conspiracy theory, too complex and stupid to summarize. Basically, the government that Republicans have cursed as incompetent is secretly so competent that they can organize a deep state conspiracy against Trump.

    The dangerous part is that these conspiracy theorists believe that Trump will strike back soon, with a military coup, that they cheer and encourage, as they work to make Trump a dictator.

    It’s important to know your enemy. I went to see and record their anti-democratic beliefs and oddball notions. There is a temptation to ignore the madness of our fellow citizens.

    But it’s better to know what they believe, for they are Trump’s base and provide cover for acts of violence like the Florida bomber. They are the sea in which terrorists swim.

    For the Trump movement is a fascist movement. If the leader of another country called the media “enemies of the people” and winked at acts of violence against them, that’s how the American media would cover it. They’d call it fascism and refer to Trumpkins as right-wing militias or violent supporters of the regime.

    But, since it’s here, we deny what occurs before our very eyes. We can’t be 1970s Argentina. Or Franco’s Spain. Yet, we have much in common with these fascist states, including a vast military, economic inequality and a leader’s cult of personality.

    We should take seriously the words of Trump supporters. Calls for dictatorship and violent suppression of enemies (“lock her up”) are preparation for the real thing.

    A couple hundred people rally in DC, walking away from reality and into the comfort of authoritarianism. It’s easy to mock them as old and stupid and sick. But we do so at our peril.

  • Photos: 500 Days of Trump

    I intended to ignore the Trump administration. But, 500 days ago, during the Inauguration, I heard a helicopter hovering over my apartment, followed it into the street, and I’ve been taking photos ever since.

    Inauguration Day riot, Muslim ban protest, Women’s March, Science March, Climate March, Women’s March (again), perp walks, protests, street art, paper mache, Juggalos, makeout sessions, security theater – I’ve documented the resistance in DC.

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