In Portraits, Seared Memories of the Capitol Riot

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This week, The Times published interviews with six people — two lawmakers, two congressional staff members and two Capitol Police officers — who were inside the Capitol on Jan. 6. when rioters broke into the building. Accompanying those interviews are portraits taken this summer by the photographer Jason Andrew, who covered the violence in Washington that day for The Times. Below, he talks about his pictures, filming video portraits at 125 frames per second and his experience photographing the riot. This interview, the result of two conversations, has been condensed and edited.

How did you create portraits in this style?

I sent Marisa Schwartz Taylor, a photo editor in The Times’s Washington bureau, veneers of Rembrandt portraits for an idea of how I thought this could be portrayed. A Rembrandt has this beautiful light, and there is always a mystery in the subject’s face: What are they thinking? The idea was to develop a more jewel-toned background. It’s very different than most of the portraiture that I go for.

I knew it would be a controlled space with limited backdrop. We shot at four locations, office buildings and inside personal offices. Some spaces were extremely small, and in others we had a lot to work with. I wanted everything to look the same. It was a style of portraiture that I thought would fit.

How did you move between video and photographs on set?

The videos are shot very slow, at 125th of a second. We wanted to play with light and how light fell on them. But the light happened to be so subtle that I didn’t change it.

I was still unsure how the subjects would respond to direction with regards to video. I felt that if I started with videos, then it wasn’t going to feel organic and natural. With stills, I was able to work out those kinks, to see how they moved with the camera. Then, when I went to videos, that would be a more fluid practice.

You photographed lawmakers but also staff members and Capitol Police officers. Lawmakers are used to having their pictures taken. Could you sense that in relation to the other subjects?

I felt that the lawmakers wanted to portray themselves in a certain way. I hoped I would be able to break that, or at least bend it. I wasn’t trying to add a layer that didn’t belong there. I wanted this to be very honest. Whether I was successful or not is not for me to say.

Describe your camera set up.

I used a Canon Mark IV for the stills and the video, and I shot everything but one portrait on an 85-millimeter portrait lens. It’s something I know how to work with well. Knowing that there was such a small time frame to do this, I didn’t feel comfortable jumping from different formats. We had 30 minutes to work with each subject. With Senator Lisa Murkowski [of Alaska], we had 15 minutes. I had to fight for that 15. She was in session.

You captured one of the more recognizable frames at the Capitol on Jan. 6 of rioters scaling a wall outside the Senate side of the building. What about you, are you still affected by that day?

We could smell the tear gas, but all I knew was what was happening in front of me. I knew I had to keep photographing. I remained there for 12 to 17 minutes. I remember saying, “I really have to file these images.”

That day is tough for a lot of us. Everything happened so quickly. The only way I could make sense of it was with time stamps. What felt like an eternity was a couple of hours. I was in the Capitol and I was leaving through the tunnels when rioters were coming in. I think if I had been there five minutes longer, I would have been inside. There were more what-ifs that day than any other in my career.

Did you want to establish that connection with these portrait subjects?

I wanted them to understand that I was there too, although we all experienced things differently. I wanted them to have that in mind. It’s still 100 percent raw and 100 percent real. You can see there are moments that are still triggers.