Jerry Falwell with Jeanne Gianas and Bruno Schmidt, from the series Moral Majority

One Book One Northwestern, 2022–23

In this photograph, the religious leader and conservative activist Jerry Falwell poses in a three-piece suit with one hand in his pocket and the other rested at the tip of his chin. He opens his mouth as if about to speak, suggesting that this photo is an outtake. He stands in front of a crumpled American flag, held up by two young people, one of whom smiles at the camera. The artist had assured his subjects that the flag would give the impression of waving in the wind majestically, but the national symbol looks pitiful in the poorly lit institutional hallway.

Tseng Kwong Chi took the photograph on a trip to Washington, DC, as part of an assignment for the left-leaning Soho Weekly News that featured the dominant political players of the Moral Majority, a conservative political action organization recently founded by Falwell. Tseng (not shown) wore the costume of seersucker suit that let him pass as someone having values approved by the conservative subjects of his photographs. But the artist’s presence as a queer immigrant of color—sometimes in front of the lens in this series—points to how easily the logic of this perceived authority and power comes undone. Tseng's mocking of the new conservative leaders of his time resonates with Clint Smith’s criticism of a blind patriotism that ignores the nation’s history of inequity and investment in segregation.