Iconic Obama poster looks a whole lot like freelancer's photo
Everybody now knows this image of President Barack Obama. It's everywhere on the planet, including T-shirts in foreign lands that don't care if the White Sox ever make the playoffs.
It's the Hope poster created by artist Shepard Fairey that became an election campaign icon an
d now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery (see photo at bottom), showing a wise young man (for a national politician) looking into the future and dreaming of great things for his people.
Except for one thing: The popular poster image of the new president appears strikingly similar to a picture snapped in 2006 by a scrambling freelance photographer named Manny Garcia on assignment for the Associated Press.
It was taken at a Washington National Press Club event 10 months before the unknown freshman Illinois senator announced his obviously impossible presidential candidacy.
And perhaps worse: Instead of gazing at a great future for a great nation, Obama may well have looked thoughtful and moved to think of the future because, a wider photo shows, he was quite likely listening to the remarks of a very conservative Republican senator. Either that or to actor George Clooney talking not about America, but about the horrors of distant Darfur.
Seriously.
A Ticket hat tip to persistent Philadelphia Inquirer photographer Tom Gralish, who did a whole bunch of photo sleuthing, and Howard Mortman, who passed it on.
-- Andrew Malcolm
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Photos: Barack Obama at a Washington lunch. Credit: Mannie Garcia / Associated Press. Shepard Fairey poses by his famous image of Obama that now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. Credit: Jewel Samad / AFP/Getty Images
So what?
Posted by: Howie | January 22, 2009 at 06:35 AM
And the point is? Portrait artists use photos as models. This is news?
On another note, I propose that any article that uses "Seriously" as the only word in a paragraph no longer qualifies as journalism.
Posted by: Nate | January 22, 2009 at 07:27 AM
Shouldn't that be Dope?
Posted by: Al | January 22, 2009 at 07:31 AM
No question in my mind it is the exact same photograph. Even the shadows match up. I think Mannie needs to get more credit for the photograph and less to Fairey for his Photoshop work....
Posted by: Matt Randall | January 22, 2009 at 08:16 AM
I don't understand the relevance of what Obama may or may have not been listening to when the photo was taken.
It's pop art, guys. People bring all kinds of meaning to imagery. Do you seriously think that poster would no longer inspire, or no longer be effective to a viewer because the president "may" have been listening to a Republican?
Also, as any 22-year old art director can tell you, of course the art was made from a photo. That's the base for the kind of derivative image manipulation Fairey did. It's a filter in Photoshop (and has been for at least 5 years). The only thing that's news here is that media savvy people don't know how material for their own medium is made.
Posted by: jvill | January 22, 2009 at 08:22 AM
"good artists borrow, great artists steal"
---pablo picasso
so share the profits and credit and move forward. Not to mention Fairey simply recontextualized a rather ordinary, mundane image that no one would have looked twice at anyway
Posted by: tzar bowler | January 22, 2009 at 08:57 AM
This is ridiculous. I just heard Shepard Fairey on Fresh Air and he mentioned a few times that all of his stylized Obama portraits are based on photographs and he even credited an AP photographer for the image in question and admitted that he found it on Google. AND he went on to thank the AP photographer for the image. It's no secret that many artists and graphic designers base illustrations on photographs. I just don't see the story here.
Posted by: Caitlin Lang | January 22, 2009 at 01:35 PM
Maybe he was listening to gangster rappers, rapping about
F___ Bush, and my president is black!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: steve rodriguez | January 22, 2009 at 05:33 PM
WOW! THIS SURE IS NEWS! CRACK REPORTING IF I'VE EVER SEEN IT!
Posted by: Blake | January 25, 2009 at 10:29 AM
May I be the first (okay, not exactly the first, I see) to say "BFD?"
Anyone who didn't know that this poster used a photo for the base and thought that fact was somehow news is an idiot who knows nothing about art, photography or (obviously) journalism.
Posted by: Julie | January 25, 2009 at 11:37 AM
Criminy!
I don't suppose the pictures could be that strikingly similar because they are both of the same person.
Nah, couldn't be.
Posted by: thebewilderness | January 25, 2009 at 11:51 AM
Funny anecdote: That iconic omage of Ché? It's based on a photo taken while he was peeing.
Posted by: Fidel Castro | January 25, 2009 at 02:48 PM
If he didn't ask permission from the photographer to edit the photographers work, then that is a problem. It would be like someone gluing a couple of googly eyes to the Mona Lisa or something; yes some would say it is art - but at best that would only be a slight comment about the original piece. This clown did work that would make him more comparable to the photographer's studio assistant. He is just a rip off artist. A very average graffiti type artist of very average talent and one that has a great deal of luck. You can actually press a couple of buttons on the computer for the same effect...ooh... tricky.
Out of all the folks running for office in recent history, Ron Paul seemed to have the best following of artists and thinkers. There were a lot of more original images from his campaign including one that came out before this Obama poster and also looked very similar to poster here. As a matter of fact, much of Obama's Campaign was an attempt to copy Ron Paul's campaign - but with more pop, and less depth.
Posted by: Elliott | February 08, 2009 at 08:28 AM