John Kaul came up with the idea for his latest art project during the first impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.

Kaul, an Afton artist, photographer and documentary filmmaker, was watching the U.S. House proceedings in 2019 when former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was called to testify.

“She had had this incredible career in the Foreign Service,” Kaul said. “Thirty-three years. She started out at the lower levels in Somalia. She did a stint in Moscow. Ultimately, she ended up being an ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, then Armenia, and then they put her in Afghanistan in 2014 at a critical time. That was about the time the first assault by Russia occurred, so the State Department put her there because she had what it took to do the job.”

In 2016, Yovanovitch was named U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Three years later, she was recalled after being accused of being disloyal to Trump. She denies the claims.

“Trump summarily dismissed her without any cause,” Kaul said. “Six months later, she’s testifying in the impeachment hearing, and what struck me was the pain of the betrayal that she had endured from this experience.”

After reading Yovanovitch’s memoir, “Lessons from the Edge,” Kaul, 79, decided to contact her.

“I thought, ‘I want to do something to honor people who are standing up to this corruption, this chaos, this madness,’” said Kaul, who spent 48 years as a lobbyist and staffer at the Minnesota Capitol. “I decided I was going to start with her. So, I sent her a letter with her portrait painted on it.”

Artist John Kaul talks about his envelope art during an exhibit at the Groveland Gallery in Minneapolis in February 2024. His latest exhibit, “Defenders of Democracy,” will be on display Saturday and Sunday in Washington, D.C. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Kaul explained that he was a photographer starting a new project and that he wanted to take her portrait, he said, because he wanted “to honor people of courage, moral and civic courage, in the age of Trump.”

Yovanovitch agreed, and Kaul flew to Washington, D.C., in October 2022 to interview and photograph her.

Her portrait launched “Defenders of Democracy,” a collection of 50 portraits that debuts this weekend at the DC Arts Center in Washington, D.C.

‘Didn’t want the usual suspects’

Over the past four years, Kaul has traveled the country interviewing and photographing Americans for the project. Each has taken significant personal and professional risks to defend democratic institutions and the rule of law, according to Kaul.

“They stood up even when it came at a price,” he said. “They knew that silence amounted to complicity. I didn’t go out and round up 50 Democrats who were mad at Trump. … I didn’t want the usual suspects. I wanted people who had taken on their tribe, or stepped out of their nonpartisan jobs. If there’s a common bond of these people, it’s a love of democracy, first of all. A lot of them are really concerned about the Constitution.”

Among his subjects: former national security adviser John Bolton; former Justice Department pardon attorney Liz Oyer; former White House attorney Ty Cobb; political commentators Bill Kristol and George Conway; former U.S. Reps. Beto O’Rourke, Adam Kinzinger and Gabby Giffords; retired Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling; former U.S. Capitol police officer Harry Dunn; current D.C. police officer Danny Hodges; former National Security Council official Fiona Hill; and former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor.

There are Democrats and Republicans, men and women, different races. Three Minnesotans are featured.

“These are people with very different backgrounds, experiences and political beliefs, but each reached a moment when remaining silent was no longer an acceptable choice,” Kaul said. “Some lost positions, relationships, personal security or professional standing because they chose duty over expedience and country over political faction. Their stories remind us that democracy survives only when citizens are willing to defend it.”

Relaxing his subjects

Kaul begins every meeting with an interview. He said he doesn’t take any photographs until he has spent some time getting to know his subject — and vice versa.

“I do the interview as much to relax the subject and give them a chance to take my measure as I do for the information, because you can’t just show up and take a photo,” he said.

One of his heroes is portrait photographer Richard Avedon, who died in 2004. Avedon used to “all of a sudden say something to somebody that would cause them to produce expressions,” Kaul said.

Kaul has adopted that technique and used it while interviewing former White House national security aide Hill at the Minneapolis Public Library in October 2024.

“She was smiling a lot, and so I said, ‘Helsinki,’” Kaul said. “Well, she had been with Trump at Helsinki when he said that he believed Russian intelligence more than he did American intelligence, and that produced a series of expressions from her.”

Kaul, who uses a Canon EOS R 5 camera with an 85mm f/1.2 lens, photographed Giffords in June in Washington, D.C. Giffords, who survived a 2011 assassination attempt in Tucson, Ariz., now leads an organization dedicated to saving lives from gun violence. She posed with her fist raised.

Kaul photographed former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords in June in Washington, D.C. (Courtesy of John Kaul)

“She’s an extremely warm and wonderful person, but she’s a fighter,” Kaul said. “Every picture I took of her, she insisted on having her fist up like she’s engaged, and she is. She’s doing her organization’s work, and they’ve helped get a lot of legislation passed.”

Work trips

Kaul got to go to Hyannis Port, Mass., in July 2025 to interview and photograph Kerry Kennedy, the lawyer, author and human-rights activist. Kennedy, the daughter of former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, told Kaul he could choose the location.

“She said, ‘Where do you want to meet? New York or Hyannis Port?’” he said. “It took me about a nanosecond, and I said, ‘Hyannis Port.’ And then when I got to her house, it wasn’t in the (Kennedy) compound, and so, I was a little disappointed by that. But then we’re talking about where we were going to do the shoot. In her house? Living room or the garden? And she said, ‘Well, there’s also my grandfather’s iconic place. Do you want to go there?’”

Former Central Intelligence Agency officer Valerie Plame, interviewed and photographed at her home in rural New Mexico, was especially gracious, Kaul said.

As he was doing a pre-interview with her on Zoom, his wife, Gloria Gunville, walked through the room. “She said, ‘Are you coming with your wife?’” he said. “I said, ‘Yes,’ and she said, ‘Well, why don’t you stay in our guest house?’ So, we stayed two days, and she cooked us a nice wonderful Southwestern chili for dinner.”

Kaul has made more than 10 trips to Washington, D.C., for interviews. He’s also been to California, Texas, Florida, Michigan and Arizona.

Friends set up a fund — called the “Defend Democracy Fund” — through the Minneapolis Foundation to finance the project.

More than $131,000 has been raised to date, and Kaul has “never asked anybody for a penny,” he said. “They reimburse me for my expenses, and they do all the (financial) reporting.”

Arne Carlson, Melissa Hortman

The exhibit includes former Republican Gov. Arne Carlson, who has been “just extremely outspoken about this stuff,” Kaul said. “He went against his tribe, and he’s saying what has to be said. He’s 92 years old, and he’s still fighting the good fight, and, by God, I wanted to honor him for that.”

Kaul interviewed and photographed him in Lake City, Minn., in September 2025. “The Trump era has trampled on those basic values that hold us together,” Carlson told Kaul. “Honesty, integrity, competence, merit, compassion and helping others have all been replaced by service to self.”

Also included is a photo of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, who were assassinated at their home on June 14, 2025, by a politically motivated gunman.

Kaul took the photo — at Melissa Hortman’s request — at a Friends of the Mississippi River fundraiser at the Nicollet Island Inn in Minneapolis in 2019. “She came up and said, ‘Hey, take a picture of Mark and me,’ and that’s how it happened,” he said. “That photo is the one that’s gone around the world. It’s the one that was at their memorial.”

Kaul photographed former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, at a Friends of the Mississippi River fundraiser at the Nicollet Island Inn in Minneapolis in 2019. (Courtesy of John Kaul)

Hortman was not interviewed for the project, but Kaul includes a quotation she gave to the Harvard Kennedy School in 2020: “In politics, often the easiest thing for anyone to do is run to a microphone, sharpen their dagger and see who has the best press conference,” Hortman said. “But what’s excruciatingly difficult in all this high emotion is to get people to the table and to slog through the work that has to happen.”

‘Moral and civic courage’

Kaul’s self-imposed deadline for the project was Nov. 3, the date of the midterm elections.

“I want this to have some kind of impact on the election in this sense: I want people to focus on moral and civic courage in a fraught time,” he said.

He said he plans to continue his portraits and interviews for as long as he is able. High on his list for his next round is Georgia politician Stacey Abrams, who made history in 2018 as the first Black woman to be nominated for governor by a major party.

Eventually, the project will be developed into a book combining his original portraits with the subjects’ personal stories, Kaul said. He would love for either Jon Meacham, Doris Kearns Goodwin or Heather Cox Richardson to write the foreword.

“I want to honor these people who have had the courage to take a stand with an eye on inspiring others to stand with it,” he said. “I do not know anyone else that’s doing this. What I am doing is documenting, for posterity, the people who have had the courage.”

‘This world we’ve created’

Kaul started working at the Minnesota Senate in 1971, when he was 23. He served as chief of staff to then-Senate Majority Leader Nicholas Coleman, a Democrat, from 1974 to 1980. Later, he worked as a lobbyist for various causes, including chief lobbyist for Minnesota State Universities from 1987 to 1993 and chief lobbyist for Minnesota State Colleges and Universities from 1993 to 2000.

In 2000, he started his own lobbying firm, Capitol Gains, and represented, among others, Washington County, Rochester Public Schools, the Minnesota Hospital Association, Minnesota Twins, Andersen Corp., Minnesota Humanities Commission and the city of Minneapolis. He retired in 2019.

Kaul, a father and grandfather, will turn 80 in January.

“Most people of my age, I suppose, are content to just kind of sit back, but I’m really very concerned about my children, and their children, and their children, and this world that we’ve created,” he said. “It’s a full-frontal assault on everything from rule of law, to civility, and certainly to a planet that is habitable. That’s why I’m on fire. We need to elect some people who care about something beyond the present moment. I just wonder how people who have kids can be so indifferent to the future of their children.”

He said he still can’t believe his good fortune to work on “Defenders of Democracy.”

“I’m just a former C student, and I’m meeting with people, most of whom have reached the summit of their careers and have had national prominence,” said Kaul, who grew up in Bloomington and went to Minnesota State University, Mankato.

“It’s been surprising how many people have been willing to sit down with me, give me time out of their busy schedules,” he said. “It’s been like getting a doctorate in moral courage for the last three years with these people. And, you know, not one of the 50 people has disappointed. Not one of them.”

‘Defenders of Democracy’ exhibit and discussion

“Defenders of Democracy” will be on display Saturday and Sunday at the DC Arts Center in Washington, D.C.

A panel discussion with Ty Cobb, Liz Oyer and George Conway, moderated by Bill Kristol, will be held 4 p.m. Saturday.

For more information, go to defenddemocracy.com.