Sen. John McCain will now greet the millions of visitors who pour into D.C.’s National Portrait Gallery.
The gallery today hung a portrait of McCain shot by then-New Yorker photographer Steve Pyke in 2005 on a wall on the first floor, just inside the G Street entrance.
In the black and white photo, McCain is standing outside the Capitol, behind a row of columns and looking straight into the camera with his hands together in front of him. It was taken for a profile that appeared in The New Yorker.
“That encounter, that exchange, is often brief, but the image which we make of those moments can be the way a person is remembered beyond their own lifetime, remaining long after the voice has been forgotten,” Pyke has preciously said about meeting with McCain.
The National Portrait Gallery said it wished to honor the “life and legacy” of the late senator and 2008 GOP presidential nominee.
“This portrait captures John McCain on Capitol Hill and I think it sets him in context and really is an environmental portrait in the sense that it gives us context for his life and his career,” Ann Shumard, the gallery’s senior curator of photographs said. “I think the classic black and white really makes us focus on the subject so we’re not distracted by vivid color.”
She added, “The composition I think really does speak to his legacy. I think of the stability, the architecture almost reinforces McCain’s stature and stability and his legacy.”
The portrait will hang in the gallery’s first floor “In Memoriam” space until Sept. 9.
