Here's how those infamous, bonkers photos of Paul Ryan fuckin' shredding it at the gym came to be
Few political photographs of the modern era have sparked more obvious, Marie Kondo-esque joy in viewers of a certain sensibility than the Paul Ryan gym photos. You know the ones: They depict the former House speaker/vice-presidential candidate/sentient mannequin brought to life by Andrew McCarthy’s love gym-ing it up in some sort of existential yearbook photo void, pumping iron with a dedicated rictus of determination that we might otherwise associate with a Muppet who’s been confronted with the grim inevitability of its own painful death. The backwards baseball cap completes the look, assuring viewers that this is a guy who fucks—but only when his reps are done, and after Jesus has dutifully signed his permission slip.
The question that’s always surrounded these photos, obviously, is how the hell they got made in the first place. Why would a man of Ryan’s political ambitions—clear even in 2011, a year before Mitt Romney would name him as his presidential running mate—pose for this look, in these positions, and with that ridiculously goofy headwear? What was the requested vibe, and how did it end up in the neighborhood of “Youth pastor busts out a Zeppelin tape and fuckin’ shreds” instead?
Now we finally have answers, courtesy of Popula’s Maria Bustillo, who gleefully tracked down Gregg Segal, the photographer who took these shots for Time back in 2011. At the time, fiscal hawk Ryan was still being considered as a potential runner for the magazine’s 2011 Person Of The Year. He lost, but the publication decided to unleash the photos the following year (right before the vice-presidential debates) in what we can only assume was an act of deliberate political sabotage. Segal—who comes off as both shyly proud of the raw goofball power of the shots in question, while also wryly noting that “Made my subject a national laughingstock” isn’t necessarily the best ad for his continued services—was happy to spill several details about the shoot, including the most important one: Ryan brought the hat to the session, and chose to wear it backwards himself: