Abstract

The presidency and leadership style of the Portuguese president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, unlike that of his predecessors, has been defined in terms of emotions and affect. Since the presidential campaign in 2016, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has become unprecedented in the number of photographs he has taken with citizens. Always affable and eager to kiss and put his arms around children, young adults, and older people who approach him on the street, the president willingly accedes to taking what have now been branded as Marselfies. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa’s humane public persona became the focus of attention, both at home and internationally, when in 2017 forest fires raged across Portugal’s northern and central regions, killing more than a hundred people and destroying the homes and livelihoods of entire villages. Time magazine and El Pais singled out a photograph of the president consoling an elderly woman during a visit to affected areas. Drawing on affect theory, this article explores this image, alongside others that have been disseminated during President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa’s first two years in office. It further juxtaposes images of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Barack Obama to examine the images’ emotional and affective power and addresses the role of emotions in politics. In addition, it considers the narrative potential of photographs and their ability to tell a story in a single frame, questioning the processes of engagement that such images elicit.