Where’s Waldo at the US Capitol Attack? – Chapter 1: Waldo Origin Story

I, like so many others in the Waldo ecosystem, was saddened and horrified to learn that our Waldo, the former international sensation whose nondescriptness in crowds has provided us with so much joy, was recently indicted in federal court for his presence in the crowd at the US Capitol Attack on January 6th. 

To those who know Waldo only through the books, this may come as a shock. But those of us who know the man himself are sadly unsurprised. His latest stunt in the crowd at the Capitol is simply the disgraceful denouement of an artist who has taken his craft too far, who has lost all sense of proportion.

To explain this most devastating ending to a sparkling career, I must start at the beginning. It is the only way one can grasp the magnitude of this tragedy.  

I first encountered the man we now call Waldo in the early 1980s, when I was a graduate student in Post-Colonial Photography at the Sorbonne. Back then, I wandered the streets during the day, and took photographs for my graduate seminar. On that particular day, I bought a rainbow trout fish and put it on various objects, particularly light posts, because they are phallic, and a product of colonial infrastructure, and the trout was clearly symbolic of the waters the Europeans travelled to subjugate the world.    

As I passed a café in Montmartre, I saw a tall, lanky man out of the corner of my eye. He was sitting at a table, by himself, stirring coffee and reading a tome by Husserl. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the man, except that he was wearing a red-and-white sweater and snowcap on a warm spring day. But there was something about him that drew one in. He seemed so unique in his blandness, so unforgettable in his forgettableness. 

I have often thought of that day, and what made me stop and take a picture of that man. There are no clear explanations. I do not believe it was an act of randomness. So much of what we undertake in life is without meaning or purpose. But this man’s demeanor spoke of something, perhaps of a paradox, or a mirror into our own contradictions. Whatever I saw in the man, millions would also come to see, in a book series that has been translated into over 50 languages across the world.

The man looked up with the emptiest of stares, and I snapped a quick photograph. Then I was back in the streets, positioning my trout on Objects of the Empire, and thought no more of my run in with the strange man. Later that night, as I was developing the photographs in the dark room, my professor pointed to the picture of the man. He asked who the man was, and I told him I had no idea. 

My professor stared at the photograph for quite some time. Finally, he said: there is something sublime in this man. He drips with mystery and intrigue. He seems to contain the entirety of the world in a vacant gaze. Will you shoot him again? I told him I had no plans to, as the man was not related to the Empire or its colonies. My professor said: it’s the Empire that made him this way.         

The following day, I sought out the man once more. I went back to the café, but I could not find him anywhere. Finally, I realized that he was sitting at a table right in front of me, blending in effortlessly with the red limestone building in the background. He was so hard to spot, and in later years, he was impossible to spot, but I am getting ahead of myself. Let me focus now on the moment that changed my life.

I told the man that I wanted to take more photographs of him. He sipped his coffee and nodded emotionlessly. I know you want to photograph me, the man said. I was wondering what took you so long to find me. I’ve been waiting for you. I paused at this statement, but thought he was just attempting to make a joke. He agreed to follow me around Montmartre so I could take photos of him.   

We traversed the famous arrondissement, stopping at the Sacré-Cœur Basilica, the Musée de Montmartre, and Lapin Agile to take pictures. As we walked, the man revealed little about himself. I had to ask him a battery of questions just to get the most basic information out of him. He said his name was Hans Heinrich. He claimed to be a German emigre. He came to Paris because he was studying to be a mime in the grand tradition of Marcel Marceau. This was the only personal data I could extract from him

But despite the little he said, I could tell that he was a sophisticated man, a man of the world. He quoted from Heidegger’s Being and Time. He talked about the wondrous sunsets in the Sahara. He seemed to have an intellectual background, one of learning, debate, and deep contemplation. And yet, the more he spoke, the less I seemed to know about him. When we parted ways in the evening, this man who called himself Hans had grown more opaque, not less.

I continued to shoot photos with Hans over the next several days. It was uncanny to witness his ability to disappear. As soon as he entered a crowd, Hans was a ghost. I took pictures of the crowd, knowing that he was within it. But it wasn’t until he tapped me on the shoulder, and I must admit, startled me, that I could see him again. He was, for all purposes, invisible. It was only when he wanted to be seen that I could see him.

Now, if you had told me that this mild-mannered man would one day join an attack on the United States Capitol, I would not have believed you. As it stands, three days have passed since the arrest of the man we now call Waldo, but his mugshot has yet to be released. A journalist at the Capitol posted a purported photo of Waldo. But the photo only shows a blurry, faceless figure in a red-and-white sweater. I should note here that the Empire’s fetitization of digital images has ruined the art of photography. 

After a few more days of shooting photos, I went to the dark room to develop my photographs. Many of the solo shots of Hans were fine, but the crowd shots were simply divine. I could scarcely see him in them. I had to look for him, over and over again, and yet there was never a guarantee I would find him. The photo of him in the crowd outside of the Moulin Rouge was particularly maddening. Hans meshed so perfectly with the red cabaret lights that he was entirely unseeable.     

As I developed these photographs in the dark room, a number of my classmates began to take notice of the odd man. In fact, something of a game developed around finding him in the photos. Everyone would crowd around the pictures, and spend hours trying to discover Hans. My fellow Post-Colonial Photographers developed a phrase for his hiddenness: being-not-being-in-Empire-phallus.     

Soon, word spread to other departments about this game we had developed. Students from disciplines such as the Anthropology of Medieval Weaponry and the History of Phallic Flags came to the dark room to partake in the ritual. I say ritual, because there was a certain religious aspect to the endeavor, as if when we found Hans, we found a part of ourselves. It sounds so strange to admit that, but I must describe it that way.    

The end of the semester was approaching, and the annual Post-Colonial Photography Showcase was happening soon. Of course I would show my work with Hans, but I needed a few more photographs of him to round out my portfolio. So I returned to the café. But I could not find him there. I assumed that he was blending in, hiding somewhere right in front of me. But after several hours of searching, I was convinced he was not at the çafé at all.

I asked the owner of the café if he had seen Hans. He said he did not know who I was talking about. I described him: tall, slim, red-and-white sweater and cap. Again, the owner did not know who I was referencing. I left, assuming that Hans had simply decided not to go to the café that day. This led me to ask a number of questions that I had not yet considered. Did Hans have a job? Where did he live? Did he have a romantic partner? Each of these questions opened a new universe of possibilities. 

I came back to the café the next day, and the day after that, and every following day. But he never came to the café again. Perhaps I was a fool for assuming that Hans regularly frequented that establishment. And yet, this was the distinct impression he imparted upon me, that the café was like a home to him. As I came to learn, this was one of his enduring traits. His ability to seem fixed when he never actually was. 

Eventually I accepted that I could only submit the pictures I already had of Hans for the Post-Colonial Photography Showcase. As I touched up the pictures, in the darkroom, I stared at the inscrutable man inside them. His face was an utter void, and yet his expression seemed infinite. It was a matter of projection, you see. I cast my own moods and desires on to him. He revealed things about me that I did know about myself.    

I walked over the Post-Colonial Hut to turn in my photographs for the Photography Showcase. It was not actually a hut – it was a whitish neo-Renaissance building. We called it a hut because the word building is a code for violent Euro-centric architectures. I saw a crowd of students gathered in front of Sorbonne Chapel. As I passed through the crowd, I thought I saw a red-and-white snowcap in my peripheral vision. I assumed I was mistaken. But instantly, my eyes were scanning the crowd. Yes, this was the beginning of it. My need to find him, whether he was or was not there.     

In a state of fury and frustration, I looked for Hans in front of the Chapel for over an hour. But I found him nowhere. I gave up the search, walked into the Hut, and submitted my photographs of the elusive man. I truly thought that I would never see Hans again, and that he was destined to become a mere footnote in my life, a story at a cocktail party. But just as I was about to relinquish him, he appeared before my very eyes.

Hans was standing in the center of the crowd that I had just searched, from top to bottom, for over an hour. He was wearing the exact same outfit as before. Indeed, it appeared that he had not taken off his clothes, even to sleep. What I didn’t realize at the time was that this occurrence presaged a pattern. That is, his visibility was always inversely proportional to our desire to find him. In other words, the more we sought him, the less he appeared; the less we sought him, the more he appeared.

Hans stood entirely still as I approached him. If he noticed me, he did not let it on. I asked him where he had been these past few days. He did not answer me. I said why did you leave the café. He turned and looked at me with cold brown eyes. He said why did you phrase it that way. I said what do you mean. He said, I did not leave the café. The café left me. You are quite a presumptuous person.

I stayed silent, uncertain of what to say. Hans began to walk away. I chased after him. I said will you please let me shoot photos of you a few more times. Hans said that there were no more photos to shoot. Fine, I said, but you won’t mind if I stay alongside you and take pictures as you walk. Hans said nothing. We meandered through the Latin Quarter together. I snapped as many pictures of him as I could. 

We passed the University of Paris, the Collège de France, the Schola Cantorum. Hans asked me why I took pictures. I said because you are an engaging subject. He said, no, why do you take pictures at all. Again, I did not know what to say. I said, at last, to preserve a moment in time. But you are not preserving a moment in time, Hans said. You are preserving ink on a page. Then my pictures are an aesthetic pursuit, I said. An endeavor undertaken to create a shared sensation of beauty. I do not have time for aesthetics, Hans said. Speak to me only when an assertion is provable, when it is beyond refutation.  

We entered the Panthéon-Assas. I cajoled Hans into stopping for a few pictures. I shot him in front of a group of students outside of the Assas building, near a small tree, on a short bench, and next to a reddish marble wall. After these shots, Hans said he had to leave. I asked him if he had to be somewhere. He said no. I asked him what he planned to do for the rest of the day. He said nothing. Then, as I looked up from my camera, he was gone. I searched for him in the nearby crowd, but my efforts were futile.     

As I travelled back to my flat in Montmartre, I noticed that I was scanning every crowd that I passed. On the streets, and in the metro, I examined each face to see if it was his. This, I’m afraid, was the start of lifelong obsessive impulse, a need to search for him wherever I went. At the time, I merely thought of this as an extension of the game that I and the other graduate students had developed. And indeed, Hans’s worldwide renown would eventually skyrocket because of just such a game. And yet, as I came to learn, playing and living a game are so different from each other, so tragically different.  

The next day, I developed the new photographs of Hans, and submitted my collection for the Post-Colonial Photography Showcase. At the end of the week, the much-anticipated Showcase took place. Students and faculty from all the various humanities departments, such as Post-Structural Fashion Studies and The History of Fonts and Frog Literature, all descended on the Marie Curie building to imbibe in photographs that were billed as “Artifacts of an Empire in Decline (The Abortion of the Photo): Observations & Violence.” 

About twenty students showcased their work. There were pictures of a spear on top of an escalator, a beehive broken over a phallic fire hydrant, and a phallus, and actual human phallus. I had arraigned all of my photos of Hans in a collage style format. The night started out slow, but as additional spectators trickled in, more and more people visited to collection. They were all enraptured by this ponderous man, and spent hours trying to identify his location in the photographs. 

The foot traffic began to pick up. And then, before I could process it, everybody in the room was standing in front of my photos of Hans. The other collections of photographs were being entirely ignored. All the students and faculty members, including my own professor, were trying to pinpoint where Hans was in my photos. The crowd members called out ideas and observations. Cheering commenced once the crowd found him in one of the photos. It was a rite of sorts, one of many that he would give us.

The crowd located Hans in all of the photographs, except for a the recent one taken at the Panthéon-Assas. Hans was standing in front of a worn reddish wall, and they simply could not identify where he was. They searched, and searched, and searched. At last, they gave up. They asked me where Has was hidden in the photo. I pointed to the center of the wall. The crowd nearly exploded into a religious ecstasy when they saw him, as if some divine revelation had visited them. It was a sacrament for our secular age.

A man in the crowd said: I can barely tell him from the wall.

Another man said: They should just change his name to Wall. Or call him Waldo. Where’s Waldo?

None of us appreciated what this man said in that moment. But his accidental phrase would change millions of lives across the world. And most especially mine.

Now, before I go any further, you must know this. After Waldo’s arrest for his presence at the US Capitol Attack, many will step forth to try to control the narrative. The truth will be reshaped, sanitized, and distorted to fit the version that those in power want us to tell. Agendas will form, accounts will change, and the revision of history will commence. But what they will tell you is not what happened. I know because I was there. 

This is the real story of the rise and fall of Waldo.  

(Chapter Two Coming Soon)