GQ's Insta-vention 2012: DNC

From the window of our delayed plane, we watched Air Force One, as massive and elegant as a blue whale, roll slowly down the runaway, although we couldn't quite see it take off. Anyway, it's over now: two weeks of overpraised or underwhelming speeches, of sweet, silly delegates in glittery hats and custom vests, of walking from this checkpoint to that, of wolfing down concession stand pizza and craving Google iced coffees, of Twitter Rashomon, with every person seeing something different and irreconcilable, of writing without reading, of our clothes always being damp and our brains always being on the fritz and our life choices always being doubted. GQ photographer Mark Peterson has captured all of it, all the gorgeousness and grotesquerie, on Instagram—and on his last day in Charlotte, he saw the TV anchors ready themselves for the biggest night of the week, and the president speak his biggest speech, and the big circus tent come on down.