Obama's people

Readers of The New York Times were given something of a surprise on 18 January 2009. For the first time, the entire magazine was given over to one story, by one photographer. The story was inescapable – the incoming administration of Barack Obama, whose historic inauguration was to take place two days later, on 20 January. The photographer was Nadav Kander. When these extraordinary pictures were published in book form as the catalogue for a major exhibition, Hodgson’s text put them in the context of previous groups of political portraits from Matthew Brady and Nadar and Carjat through Richard Avedon.