Scenes at Capitol ‘wild’, NZ photojournalist says
High fences with razor wire and a 25,000-strong United States National Guard are scenes Graeme Jennings has never experienced in his 10 years photographing Capitol Hill – until now.
The Auckland-born photojournalist has been living and working in Washington, DC, since 2008 and has covered politics since Barack Obama was in the White House.
That was nothing compared with the protests, riots and violence Jennings has experienced in the past four years while Donald Trump has been president.
It had been a ‘‘whirlwind’’ since 2016, he said. In the past year, he covered Trump’s first impeachment hearing, Covid-19 protests, the Black Lives Matter movement, and Trump supporter marches.
Most recently, Jennings, who works for the Washington Examiner, was on the ground, photographing the Capitol siege on January 6.
Jennings told Stuff he had been in the chamber at the Capitol the entire day as ballots were being counted for all states.
He had just left to file his photos to the magazine when his colleague told him protesters outside were coming up the west side of the Capitol and were climbing on the inauguration stage.
‘‘I basically just ran outside and just hot-footed it over to the west side of the Capitol, and I just saw this massive mob of people getting teargassed,’’ Jennings said. ‘‘A lot of us were predicting there would be a bit of violence but we did not predict anything like what happened.’’
Jennings said he saw the mob attacking a line of police, throwing anything they could find at them – including scaffolding.
There was ‘‘no way’’ there were enough police at the scene and they were ‘‘just completely overrun’’, he said. ‘‘It was probably one of the craziest things I have ever seen ... The only way I could describe it is psychotic.’’
Jennings is currently preparing to cover Joe Biden’s inauguration – something he called ‘‘really surreal’’. He covered Obama’s second inauguration and Trump’s inauguration but said this would be very different.
Most of Washington, DC, was shut down, he said, and there was a 25,000-strong National Guard presence in the city. ‘‘That is actually more than Afghanistan and Iraq put together. It is wild.’’