Mary Ellen Mark - Roy Cohn with American Flag, from the portfolio In America
Mary Ellen Mark’s 1986 gelatin silver print, Roy Cohn with American Flag, presents the former chief counsel for Senator Joseph McCarthy a mere four months before his death of AIDS, lounging slightly slumped in his high wing-backed chair, leering out at the viewer through heavy, tired eyes. This once powerful, fearful figure now melts into his throne, right arm resting against the arm of the chair, weakly grasping a cheap, mass-produced American flag while his left wrist drapes languidly over the opposite arm. Though the flag and lavish interior of Cohn’s stately home may seem to signal a sort of triumphant, ideal of “heroic” masculinity, the epitome of the American man, Mark subverts both these notions and the qualities and ideals that Cohn purported to stand for in his career to show the irony and hypocrisy of his life as a sort of mask which reveals rather than conceals the wearer.
Cohn’s flood-lit figure emerges from the shadowy background, as if in an interrogation room, opposite of which stands the viewer, reversing the roll he held in trials of the so called “Red Scare,” the mass accusation of hundreds of individuals under supposed involvement with communism in 1950s. Although Cohn stares us down, he squints slightly, unable to quite withstand the blinding exposure. Despite his apparent discomfort, Mark’s unique form of photojournalism hinges on her ability to create deep level of trust and intimacy with all her subjects from Ku Klux Klan members to disenfranchised Indian sex workers. In an interview with Margret Moorman, Mark, with whom the author has just met, is described as “empathetic” and “looks like a person who can be trusted.”1 Mark explains her tactics as “I try to spend as much time as possible on a project to build a rapport with my subject. Intimacy is very important to my photographs. Being a woman is often an advantage in enabling me to achieve this intimacy because people, especially strangers are less threatened by women.”2 Priding herself on being able to bring intimacy and even secrets out of her subjects of their own free will, she ultimately has control over their composition and thus works like Roy Cohn with American Flag can be read for this highly orchestrated meaning. She accounts for the power of such images in saying “often I’ll be able to make a couple images that are really part of my own work and can stand alone. That’s what interests me in journalistic work anyway— images that don't necessarily have to be linked to other images to be compelling.”3
Mark’s use of intense and dramatic lighting literally sheds light on the infamous man but refuses to illuminate the space around him— this interaction, that of the viewer and Cohn, permits the viewer to judge the man as himself alone, not concealed or distracted by any other element. This man who lived his whole life in the closet while forcing others out in the Red and Lavender Scares is here “outed” by Mark, his body available for our scrutiny, the back of his own chair blocking his retreat into shadow. Mark’s lighting also casts half of Cohn’s face in darkness, indicating the hypocrisy of his actions and his “two faced”-ness. This half shadow is echoed by its cast profile silhouette on the wing of the chair, recalling the iconic profiles of presidents on coins, seals and commemorative reliefs. The decorative texture of the ornate chair distorts this double image, however, almost rendering it unrecognizable. This seems to foreshadow that Cohn will be best known not for his political work, but for his scandalous and ironic intimate life.
Mark’s composition is dominated by the sturdy, pyramidal lines of the back of Cohn’s chair, echoed by his downward sloping shoulders and again by his starched, white collar. This stability and assertiveness is, of course, false as betrayed by the inverted pyramid formed by his forearm and the leg supporting the American flag, the pinnacle, or rather the nadir, culminating at his crotch. Cohn’s penis, or more accurately his closeted sexuality and concealment of his identity, here represented by his crossed leg which obscures our view of that which ultimately destroys him, both in life and reputation, is situated at the exact center of the composition. However, even in this revealing portrait, it is hidden and instead Cohn gives the viewer a pseudo-phallus, the American flag which rests flaccidly, defeated across his lap.
While this reading may reflect a damning and almost violent act, Mark’s work is consistently called “honest” and “not voyeuristic.”4 What then accounts for a work that would subvert Cohn’s constructed mask and force him out of the shadowy closet? One possible explication is that in the “intimacy” and “honesty” Mark’s interactions with her subjects inspire, Cohn outed himself. Conversely, this photograph may indicate a rupture in the fabric of Cohn’s highly curated “projected self.”
An article written by Cohn’s cousin, David Lloyd Marcus, recalls that Cohn denied vehemently even in his most weakened and emaciated state the rumor he had AIDS or even was dying and insisted that such plot against him was certainly a smear campaign.5 Cohn was still having sex, or at least claiming to, mere weeks before his death, perhaps to try to snuff AIDS accusations.6 When he finally was no longer able to mask his illness, he told everyone he had liver cancer but was in remission.7 Roy was interviewed on "60 Minutes” and Mike Wallace put it to him: Are you now or have you ever been a homosexual? Ditto with AIDS. Roy fought it off the best he could: "I'll tell you categorically, I do not have AIDS." Well, then how did all this talk about you get started? "Oh, it's a cinch, Mike. Take this set of facts: bachelor, unmarried, middle-aged--well, young middle-aged. The stories go back to the [McCarthy] days.8 However, behind closed doors and out of the public eye, he was “private[ly] obsessed with death.”9 Just as Cohn’s Diagnosis with AIDS had begun with a cut that would not stop bleeding, he lost his ability to maintain boundaries between public and private as his inner self began to spill out and “As he began his long dying, Cohn lost control over the image he had always projected of himself.”10
Marcus recalls that as he visited Cohn’s house in his final days, the Corinthian columns that adorned his stately manor began to crumble, the very structure of the house echoing his deteriorating health.11 A close friend of Cohn once recalled spending an evening spent singing patriotic songs around his piano, saying “Roy sang three choruses of 'God Bless America,' got a hard-on and went home to bed.”12 Cohn’s portrait does exactly that which he did all his life, conceal his sexuality through over-vigilant patriotism. Cohn's actions during the McCarthy Trials cemented the idea of homosexuality as a traitorous act in the minds of Americans, yet soon after Mark shined light on the once powerful figure, his own sexuality treacherously betrayed him. What Mark actually captures in Cohn is not a hypocrite or even a man but a portrait of AIDS, a disease which tears down boundaries, collapses egos and forces its victims out.
Lauren Miller
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1Margret Moorman, “Mary Ellen Mark,” Art Nexus 88 (April 1989): 152.
2Maya Angelou and Mary Ellen Mark, Mary Ellen Mark: The American Odyssey 1963-99, (New York: Aperture, 1999) 148.
3Moorman, “Mary Ellen Mark,” 153.
4Ibid., 152.
5David Lloyd Marcus, “Roy Cohn’s Last Days,” Vanity Fair (August 1987).
6Nicholas von Hoffman, “The Snarling Death of Roy M. Cohn,” Life Magazine (March 1988).
7Marcus, “Roy Cohn.”
8Hoffman, “The Snarling Death.”
9Marcus, “Roy Cohn.”
10Ibid.
11Ibid.
12Hoffman, “The Snarling Death.”