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Absurd.

The still communicates the evidentiary authority that judicious courts and broaded public courts of opinion ascribe to images, while also pointing to how images alone are insufficient- the Senator is also holding a physical snowball. Knowing the context of this image makes it feel like a meme-able image. The still communicates the latent potentiality of images as serious and humorous depending on their recontexualization. There are multiple paradoxes at play in this still. 

I was struck by the legitimacy of the room, the easel, the suits, and the C-Span logo enhance the absurdity of the image.

The still communicates the evidentiary authority that judicious courts and broaded public courts of opinion ascribe to images, while also pointing to how images alone are insufficient- the Senator is also holding a physical snowball. Knowing the context of this image makes it feel like a meme-able image. The still communicates the latent potentiality of images as serious and humorous depending on their recontexualization. There are multiple paradoxes at play in this still. 

This image represents the ideologies and rhetoric used to enforce and reinforce both toxic attitudes towards information production and the environment at large. This image works as something of a double entendre on toxicity.

This image conveys a variety of concepts in a simple and elegant way, once the context is given. In one frame a complex narrative is constructed.

At first glance I notice the empty chairs surrounding Senator Inholfe. This opens the topic of "toxicty" in that the speaker seems to be speaking to no one, eyes down at the page, empty chairs all around them, isolated, speaking to themself. In the US, the conversation about climate breakdown and in national politics is currently "toxic".

Based on the author's design statement and caption, I read this image as an example of "thoughtcrime" from George Orwell's 1984, in other words an illegal thought. We are being chastised for believing the "idea" that it was the warmest year on record and told that was clearly false because the senator had a snowball in their hand. 

I find this image "ethnographic" and to point to the author's familiarity with this video, down to the seconds, which represents an ethnography of temporality. As the process of cutting out just one frame distorts time, the second way the image is ethnographic is in the way it captures "normal", everyday speeches in the senate. There are constant condemnations of the poor, social safety net policies with simultaneous cries for larger defense and pentagon budgets. Senator Inhofe's stunt adds the element of props, making it all the more silly.

I don't understand.