Framing Faith: From Camera to Pen, An Award-Winning Photojournalist Captures God in a Hurried World by Matthew Knisely

Author:Matthew Knisely [Knisely, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2014-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

“NICE TO MEET YOU, NICE-LEE”

During the run-up to the 2000 presidential campaign, I was locked into routine press coverage of George W. Bush’s campaign stop in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. After the regular pomp, the ceremonial hand-shaking, autographs, and photo ops, members of the press were granted brief one-on-one time with the candidate—a practice that is standard in the industry. During one of these more intimate interviews with George W. Bush, however, something certainly beyond “standard” pulled me from the sidelines into the story.

While being questioned, President Bush playfully took the microphone out of my fellow reporter’s hand and started asking us both questions as if we had switched roles with him. It was an appreciated moment of humor in all the humdrum, which might’ve left a slight impression on me, even if the next parts hadn’t happened.

Right after his mock interviews of us, President Bush pulled the microphone close to his chin and asked his final question. Locking his eyes onto me, he inquired simply, “What’s your name?”

“Matt Knisely,” I replied.

Nodding attentively, a slight smirk crept to his face as he delivered his trademark confused look made famous by Will Farrell on Saturday Night Live.

I knew what was coming. Wait for it . . . wait for it . . . “Nice to meet you, Nice-Lee.” (This is something I’ve heard a million and one times in my life.)

As I left, I was struck by the way President Bush had intentionally worked to create a moment of familiarity inside of his campaign tour, but I knew it was still formulaic, the product of social graces he used with the many people he encountered.

At this point, this was a refreshing interaction but still not a story that impacted me on a deep, personal level.

The day I got pulled into the story of who President George W. Bush is and what he was doing in the world didn’t occur until two and a half years later when I was working in Arizona, covering a private fund-raiser and dinner for a Gubernatorial Candidate, shortly following a national crisis. I was working in the press pool, lost in a sea of cameras and microphones and notes, listening to the president stump for a candidate, and defend the details of the United States’ recent troop deployment into Afghanistan.

Everything was exactly as it always was as President Bush left the stage, sliding down the outside perimeter of the crowd of reporters. I saw his profile as he passed, striding next to me, with me in his peripheral vision. That’s when he paused, pointed at me, and said, “Nice to meet you, Nice-Lee,” as he continued his path outside the room and back into the expected protocol.

I was stunned. How did he do that? How did he remember me? He had to have remembered our interaction and my story.

For the media outlets, that story was about a candidate’s campaign and the movement of US troops, but for me (the photographer who meets—but is never remembered by—famous, influential people), it became a story of connecting as humans.

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