While what’s going on inside Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena continues to fascinate and mortify, it’s the crowd gathered outside the arena that yields a microcosm of contemporary America, in all its vibrant contradictions, complications, and radical styles.
Bay Area-based photographer Matthew Reamer was on the scene, using his mobile portrait studio to capture many of the colorful players. He’s just posted an amazing series on his website (captions coming soon) and featured some of the portraits on his Instagram account.
“Basically the reason I shot the photos was because I found the ratio of media to civilians to be almost comical in its imbalance,” Reamer told me over email. “So I decided to shoot portraits as a way of not getting the same photos that everyone else was getting. The goal, and I think we did an OK job at it, was to try to get accurate cross section of the different kinds of groups you will see here.”
“According to Reamer’s website: “These portraits are meant to give a glimpse of the type of people one might encounter here at the RNC in Cleveland. The most obvious and dominant group here is law enforcement. But you are also sure to see plenty of delegates (pro- and anti-Trump), open carriers (pro- and anti-Trump), vendors, evangelists, anarchists, and activists of every persuasion.”
