Not Here to Please You

From the No Kings protest in Troy, Ohio, 6/14/25

I posted a photograph the other day to the Frames Photography Facebook group: three women, standing in front of the courthouse in Troy, Ohio. They were holding signs. It was quiet, striking, and very human.

That image drew more response than I expected. Not about the composition or the tone, but about what people assumed it meant.

Some people praised it. A few said it reminded them of older eras. But others took offense. One said it was the reason he was canceling his subscription. Another unloaded in the comments, dismissing the photo as trash, accusing me of being biased, and making it clear he wasn’t there to talk about photography.

That’s when I decided to post a follow-up.

Not as a rebuttal. Not to prove anything. But to clarify something that mattered to me. The second set of images came from a protest that took place years earlier, in the very same spot. That one leaned the opposite direction politically, with different flags, different messages, and different people standing out in the cold for something they believed in.

I hadn’t posted those photos before, not because I was hiding them, but because I try to let each image speak on its own terms. I posted the photo of the three women because it was strong. Because it moved me. Not because it aligned with one side or the other.

But when the backlash came, it became clear that some viewers weren’t seeing the image. They were seeing what they needed it to be. They were projecting. They filled in their own narrative and used the comment section to defend it.

So I posted the earlier work. Not to balance a scale, but to say, clearly, that I document what’s in front of me. I don’t only photograph what I agree with. I photograph what’s honest, what feels important, what needs to be witnessed.

Some of the comments were hard to read. They were personal. Dismissive. Angry in ways that had little to do with the image itself. But I’ve come to understand that when emotions run that hot, there’s often something deeper beneath it. We’re all trying to make sense of a complicated time. Sometimes people lash out because they don’t know where to put that weight.

I won’t stop doing this work. I won’t avoid protest scenes, or public moments, or expressions that challenge the frame. I take portraits. I take quiet scenes. And I take documentary photographs. I’m not here to provoke. I’m not here to perform neutrality. I’m here to pay attention.

Because photography is still, at its core, an act of observation.

And observation means showing up.

Even when the comments get a little pushy.

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