Presidential Photobomb

There’s a certain kind of quiet inside the Lincoln Memorial—stone and echo, like a room built to hold its breath. And then, of course, there’s us: bundled up, leaning in close, trying to fit a whole day into one small frame.

We snapped this photo and only later really noticed how perfect the timing was. Lincoln sits behind us in his permanent, patient stillness, looking like he’s tolerating the modern ritual of the selfie with the same calm he gives everything else. It feels like a photobomb, but the slow, presidential kind—less “gotcha,” more “remember where you are.”

Washington, D.C. has a way of doing that. You walk around with coffee in your hand, chatting about where to go next, and suddenly you’re standing in front of something you’ve seen your whole life in textbooks. The scale of it doesn’t hit you all at once; it comes in pieces: the cold air, the marble, the softness of light on white stone.

We came for a photo, but left with that lingering feeling that some places are bigger than their monuments. They’re built out of memory, and the quiet pressure of history, and the strange comfort of being very small for a moment—together—while something enormous sits watching from the background.