Michael O. Snyder: Placing Bets on Mosquitos

Michael O. Snyder: Placing Bets on Mosquitos by Aline SmithsonFebruary 12, 2025

©Michael O. Snyder, Abraham Lincoln, from Placing Bets on Mosquitos

If there was ever a time in the history of our country that recognizes presidential flaws, we are currently living it. Michael O. Snyder has created a series that speaks to those flaws through a typology of presidential heads, left to the elements, forgotten, and suffering the ravages of time, in his series, Placing Bets on Mosquitos. The series is at once humorous, fascinating, and timely, revealing that everything fades, including power and fame.

©Michael O. Snyder, Chester A. Arthur, from Placing Bets on Mosquitos

“Ignore the NO TRESPASSING sign and drive down the long driveway. I’ll meet you at 6:45pm prompt. Wear boots.”

This was the email that I had received earlier in the day from John Plashal, who was, as promised, waiting for me in his truck when I arrived. It was a muggy April evening, and I had to swat several mosquitos on the short walk from my car to his. “Yeah,” he smiled, observing my battle with the bugs, “it’s all the standing water around the field. Part of the allure, I guess.”

The field that John was referring to was more of an open-air dumping ground near the town of Croaker, about forty minutes outside of Richmond, Virginia. I’d driven half a day to meet John to experience an oddity – America’s most alluring trash heap. And I wasn’t alone in my curiosity.

What I, and hundreds before me, had come here to see were the remains of Presidents Park, forty-two monumental busts of the nation’s presidents, originally constructed as part of an ambitious open-air attraction designed to capture the attention of tourists visiting nearby Colonial Williamsburg. The operation went bust (pun intended) after a few years of lackluster ticket sales, and the statues were unceremoniously loaded onto trucks and dumped in a field outside of the aptly named Croaker. And it’s here, in their semi-forgotten repose, that things got interesting.

“Yeah, the tours of the site are pretty much always sold out.” Said John. “People come from all over the world. The internet has made it famous.”

I too am a guilty party in this trend; I discovered Presidents Park while doom scrolling on Instagram late one night. But you’ll have to admit, the visuals are arresting. Here is a truly colossal consecration of American nationalism. A spumescent celebration of patriarchal idolatry that could make even a Boy Scout blush. And now, ironically famous because it has been discarded and forgotten, abandoned to mud, moss, and the patient indifference of time.

I thought it was just delightful. I had to see it.

©Michael O. Snyder, John Adams, 1, from Placing Bets on Mosquitos

A quick search of the web led me to John, the one guy who has official permission to access the site. I happily paid my forty bucks and waited for the instructions to hit my inbox. A few months later my number was up, and I was on my way to Croaker.

After several stragglers joined our group, John lead us down a washed-out dirt track, around a small mountain of tires, and across a wet swath of grass to the field. As advertised, there were the giant, crumbling heads of our nation’s big bad daddies. It was a pleasing, if somewhat on-the-nose, recall of Shelley’s Ozymandias, the King of Kings. A modern rendition of which might begin:

Two score phallus in a field did lie /

Half-sunk in pools which larval legs ply

Alternatively, here is my Yelp haiku:

Big heads

A bit anticlimactic

Worth every penny

I wandered around for a while. Swatted bugs. Took photos. Went home. On the long drive back, I reflected that what I liked most about Presidents Park is that it’s sort of a Rorschach Test for our uncertain times. Perhaps you see a cautionary tale about the perils of hubris. How the high will be made low and the presumably eternal will be lost to the sands of time. Or maybe you see a potent metaphor for a crumbling society. Here lie the remnants of a once-mighty-now-hollow democracy that must be dismantled and made great again. Or perhaps you look upon Presidents Park and weep for the memory of these great statesmen, whose philosophies birthed a world that is now lead by politicians that type in ALL CAPS. Or maybe you’re more of a self-reflective type, and you find yourself wondering why we’re drawn to such spectacles of destruction in the first place. Why do we crane our heads at car accidents and wake up every morning secretly hoping that today is the day that the asteroid hits? I’m trying to recall my notes from high school psychology. Is it an Oedipal complex? A latent death wish? Heuristic hypomania? You tell me.

This much at least I know to be true: concrete turns to dust in as little as fifty years. Those mosquitos, on the other hand, the ones being birthed silently in the pools at the edge of the field, they’ve been here for about two hundred million years.

I’m placing my bets on the mosquitos.

©Michael O. Snyder, Franklin Roosevelt, 1 (center), from Placing Bets on Mosquitos

Michael O. Snyder (b. 1981) is a photographer and filmmaker documenting the climate crisis and related social-environmental issues. In addition to creating visual stories, he is deeply interested in how our narratives can help drive social impact. His work has been featured by outlets such as National Geographic, The Guardian, and The Washington Post. He’s been honored by awards such as the Portrait of Humanity Award, the Decade of Change Award, The Welcome Prize for Photography, and the LensCulture Portrait Awards. Snyder is a Pulitzer Grantee, a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, and an Assistant Professor of Visual Communication at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School in New York. In 2021 he was a featured speaker at the United Nations Climate Conference. In 2022, the University of Edinburgh named him one of its most “influential alumni making a significant contribution to climate science and justice.”

Instagram @michaelosnyder