During my time following the New Hampshire primaries, the one aspect of each event that stood out to me was the environment each candidate chose. Dean Phillips tended to stick to smaller businesses including Brothers Cortado Coffee shop in Concord. Similarly, the one Marianne Williams event I covered was held in a local Nashua catering company Soul Sistas. This could be partly due to the expectant crowd numbers, but despite each of the venues being smaller each was tightly packed with spectators filling seats and standing along the windows if need be. When it came to Republican candidate Donald Trump, aware of his following, rented out the SNHU arena that could fill 10,000 seats however, was filled roughly one-third of the expected capacity. The feelings of being in a cramped coffee shop in an intimidating arena are not ones I think the campaigns chose mindlessly. A part of Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson’s message was that they fight for the working class people and that they are no different than the rest of America. Donald Trump however seemed to put him above Americans. Sure he was fighting for them but he was doing it in the place of a savior sent by god, which was evident in a video projected on the stage before his appearance. The one candidate who captured both the large anticipated crowd simultaneously with the cozy feel was Nikki Haley. She also hosted events in local places, such as schools and country clubs, but she also knew her anticipated crowd size, since she was one of the last remaining Republican candidates. So, she chose local spaces that could accommodate this. Being able to bounce from event to event and noticing these feelings gave me an insight into the candidate that I would not have been able to see from strictly watching the news, and therefore I attempted to capture it in my photos.
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