May I present my photo essay “The Trump World”
Here follows a brief description of my photo essay “The Trump World”, and you can see all the pictures under “PHOTOGRAPHER/”THE TRUMP WORLD” - I hope you enjoy it!
The Trump World
By Mark Desholm
Short description
A visual opinion essay about power, spectacle and money in New York during the Trump era - told through black-and-white street photography that gradually turns into satire.
This short photo essay explores how politics, money and spectacle intersect in New York - the symbolic capital of American power.
The photo essay begins with quiet observational images: commuters in Grand Central Terminal, the skyline seen through a metal grid, runners crossing a bridge. From there the images move toward the architecture of financial power — Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange and Trump-branded towers.
As the essay progresses, the tone subtly shifts. Signs of contradiction begin to appear: a homeless person sitting outside the stock exchange, anti-ICE graffiti, the branding of political identity on luxury buildings.
A recurring object - a rubber duck made to resemble Donald Trump - slowly enters the visual narrative. First it appears on a pile of dollar bills. Later it resurfaces in increasingly absurd contexts.
The final image shows the duck floating in a toilet bowl - a visual metaphor for the strange collision of politics, spectacle and money in the Trump era. Rather than arguing a political thesis directly, the essay lets the city’s symbols tell the story.
Visual approach
The photo essay is constructed entirely from black-and-white still photography edited into a sequence.
The visual language moves through three stages:
Observation - documentary street images of New York’s daily rhythms.
Power - architectural symbols of finance and political branding.
Satire - the recurring rubber-duck motif transforms the narrative into visual commentary.
The photographs function like frames in a visual essay and the tone is essayistic rather than polemical.
