viz.

Like Sarah, I've been paying a lot of attention lately to how journalists photograph the two presidential candidates. (And I apologize that this image is so tiny.)

Photographer Damon Winter, for the New York Times, has been following Obama on the campaign trail and generating a wealth of stunning, provocative photographs. When I saw this one on the home page -- it was the first slide in an interactive slideshow that ran on October 24 -- I started thinking about one of the major criticisms of Obama leading up to the Democratic primary.

There were those who said he had no substance, that he was all rhetoric, all hope and change and empty promises. A related criticism was the idea that he was a cipher, a blank screen onto which every American could project whatever she wished.

And aren't those ideas just what this photograph suggests? We can't see Obama's features, but we know his silhouette by now, and in this image it stands out in black against the blue, yellow, and white sky. Devoid of context, Obama's figure seems other-worldly and enigmatic. Blank he is -- all emptiness ready to be filled with the dreams of voters.

Listening to Winter talk about his journey with Obama during this campaign -- he says that he's taken tens of thousands of photographs of the senator -- I get the feeling that he's sympathetic to and probably supportive of Obama's candidacy. Does a photograph like this make a statement, one way or another, about Obama's readiness, his substance? Is that what Winter's thinking about, or does he just want to take a beautiful picture? And does it matter?

You can see an earlier Damon Winter slideshow here.