Damon Winter/The New York Times, “President Obama speaking at a campaign event at Bayliss Park in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Aug. 13.”

When I look at this image, I’m first struck by the oddity of Barack Obama’s figure. Then, I see that it is fitting to show Obama from this disembodied, almost cyborg-like view, given Obama’s remarkable ability to speak to multiple audiences and connect with them so skillfully. The photographer offers a parallax view of Barack Obama. A parallax view is an apparent displacement of an object’s position when observed from different standpoints, and is used to determine distance. The red, white, and blue draping on the campaign stage dwarfs the president’s figure and makes the image of Obama exaggeratedly small when observed from this angle, which speaks to the magnitude of the office for which he seeks reelection. Positioning the president as somewhat diminished by his incumbent role ironically speaks to the distance traveled by Obama since his 2008 run, and highlights his stature in 2012 as no longer just a candidate.

This photograph is also an image of directionality. Obscured from view is Barack Obama’s face, barely discernible from this angle and distance, perhaps implying the blind optimism of naïve voters who once saw him as definitively solving all of America’s problems. Notice how the photographer captures the elegant gesture of his left hand – almost as if to call to mind Michelangelo’s fresco of “Adam and God” in the Sistine Chapel. With his finger pointed Obama seems to be indicating which way for America to go. (Who really knows? Does this more difficult path he speaks of really lead to a better place?)

Come November, Obama has to guide his base back to the polls as he sets his sights on staying in the White House so he can finish advancing his progressive policy agenda. Besides suggesting a vision for “change” as expressed by his 2008 Democratic Presidential campaign, this new one-word slogan for 2012, “forward” is centered in the frame. “Forward” is a slant rhyme with “four more”… years, that is.

With voters searching for an American dream in disarray, Obama’s job this time around is seen as renegotiating voter expectations for all out social transformation. Although having successfully upended traditional presidential campaign politics through his expansion of key electoral demographics and battleground states, Obama finds this 2012 election not unlike the images in the viewfinder, still up in the air. The media cameras reflect this fickle world of presidential approval ratings: up this week, down the next. Meanwhile, the possibility of a one-term presidency looms over the Obama campaign and pollsters predict this November’s voter turn-out to be a complete toss-up.

This marked absence of any middle ground seems to create undue focus on undecided voters, clearly disillusioned by the disappearance of livable wage jobs and their growing recognition that the meritocratic basis for equal opportunity is being systematically overturned by corporate superstructures devised to favor the few. What’s not in the frame is what takes on the greatest significance for this photo. This being, of course, the “nothing” in the middle. This absence incites bewildering confusion. Simply put, Americans now see Obama differently. With this new line of sight, it becomes apparent that not only has Obama been changed by the demands of the office but so too, have the American people been changed by what may or may not be the reelection of the first African-American president of the United States.