I captured Obama’s favorite photo of the 2008 election. It’s a reminder of what we’ve lost.

The Lincoln Memorial was the obvious place to go on the night America elected its first Black president. There, I found quiet contemplation.
Twelve years ago, in the wee hours of election night 2008, I took a photograph that probably ranks among the least exciting pictures Ive made in my 35-year career. It shows a group of 26 people standing in a steady drizzle on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, all gathered in the dark around a single transistor radio.
And yet the moment I pressed my shutter, I knew I had captured something special. In a longish exposure because of the dark, it felt as if I had recorded a tiny sliver of our republic for posterity, like one of of those slightly blurry portraits of Abraham Lincoln himself. You just stare through the grain and blur, waiting for some wisdom or guidance to emerge.
In the years since, the quietness of that election night photo its pretty much the polar opposite of what we expect from a victory celebration has always seemed to resonate with people. This week, in his new memoir, President Barack Obama singled it out.
My favorite photograph from that night isnt of Grant Park at all, Obama writes. Rather its one I received later as a gift, a photograph of the Lincoln Memorial, taken as I was giving my speech. It shows a small gathering of people on the stairs, their faces obscured by the darkness, and behind them the giant figure shining brightly, his marble face craggy, his eyes slightly downcast. Theyre listening to the radio, I am told, quietly contemplating who we are as a people and the arc of this thing we call democracy.
The Lincoln Memorial on the night of Nov. 4, 2008, in Washington, D.C.
 (Photo: Matt Mendelsohn)
It’s not every day that a president cites your work, and certainly not in one of the most anticipated books in recent memory. Even more, Obama had one of the most celebrated personal photographers ever, Pete Souza. What drew him to my static little image?
Capturing history
Having had a few days to process the thousands of emails Ive received from excited friends and colleagues (50 calls from my mother alone), I think I might know. And the reason goes straight to the heart of what has transpired in our country since that night, and what has been lost.
People celebrate at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., after the election of Barack Obama on Nov. 4, 2008.
 (Photo: Matt Mendelsohn)
But first, some logistics. The genesis of the image was, silly enough, my sofa. For two decades as a photojournalist including nine years at this paper I covered historic events: Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands, Ruth Bader Ginsburgs swearing-in, earthquakes in California. But on this night, I was sitting on the couch watching CNN, having traded in my photojournalist credentials for wedding photography. Looking back, I screwed up: I really missed journalism.
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 At 11:00 p.m., as CNN anchors gushed about the throngs at Grant Park and the White House, I couldnt take it anymore. I jumped up and said to my wife, Maya, I gotta go.
Where? she asked in disbelief.
I dont know! I gotta go and make a picture of something.
The Lincoln Memorial seemed like the obvious place to go on the night America elected its first Black president: Lincoln himself, Marian Anderson, Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech. And as I approached, I expected to find a crowd of thousands.
I found two dozen.
A couple looks toward the Washington Monument from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., after the election of Barack Obama on Nov. 4, 2008.
 (Photo: Matt Mendelsohn)
A TV cameraman leaving the scene shook his head at me. Nothing to see here, he said.
The first thing that struck me was the radio, decidedly more 1958 than 2008. Then, the quiet. No one was speaking. Not more than a mile away, tens of thousands of people were screaming their lungs out. But here, just a voice coming through a little radio.
The arc of history
One of the emails I received this week was from Anne Junod, whos frozen in a bit of blur on the steps just beneath the Lincoln statue. Anne was just out of college when she and two friends jumped in a car.
When the election was called for Obama, she wrote me, we knew we had to get down to the Lincoln Memorial. We were sure there would be thousands of people rushing to the place where MLK Jr. gave his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. We wanted to take in the history and sanctity of this night in the place of greatest significance, where MLK Jr. cast his vision for a moment such as this.
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We didn’t go to the White House because Obama wasn’t there yet. This moment wasn’t about Obama in the White House. It was about the historic struggle that got him there, the work for which is not complete.
People celebrate during the early morning of Nov. 5, 2008, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., after the election of Barack Obama.
 (Photo: Matt Mendelsohn)
Anne and her friends wanted to honor our nations progress. I wanted to be a journalist again. We went to the Lincoln that night because thats its purpose: We all make a pilgrimage there at some point to quietly contemplate our democracy, Republican and Democrat alike, as Obama wrote.
Looking at the picture today, its not just the radio that feels a bit ancient. People react to my photograph because it represents a time that feels lost amidst the current divisiveness and screaming and shoving. We long for quiet, we long for contemplation, we worry for our democracy.
When people see this photo, it reminds them of those things.
Matt Mendelsohn is a photographer in Arlington, Virginia. He worked as a photo editor and photographer for USA TODAY from 1992 to 2001. Follow him on Twitter: @mattmendelsohn
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