Hope - Shepard Fairey
‘Obama Hope’ poster had a big impact on me in 2008 leading up to the election. I remember knocking on doors and trying to look professional. I wore a black suit and black thin sock and slick shoes with heels while trudging through the snow and having more than a couple door slammed in my face. The first election I was able to vote in was Gore and Bush. Although I was a progressive then I didn’t really feel as passionate about that election as in 2008 and even less so in 2004.
What I think made this image so right for the time was that it was that it summed up the sentiment of the country and the world in many ways. We had lived through 8 years of one of the worst times in American history: terrorist attacks, deception and corruption, a terrible unjust war, financial and economic collapse.
The United State for the first time had an opportunity to elect an African American with a unique background who in 2004 was elected to the Senate and gave one of the most powerful speeches in United States rhetorical history and many memorable speeches to follow. Changing not only the tangible or visible but also the symbolic of what we had come to know as ‘president’.
Shepard Fairey is known as one of the most respected and widley known street artist in the world. Unlike his Obey poster which has a mythical iconicism lifted from the 80s wrestler the Giant. The repetition and size of the image is meant to impart a sense of importance to the viewer. And each viewer comes away with a different view of what the image means I believe. My first reaction is that the image was like a revolutionary leader whipping up rebel descent against an oppressive government and to terrorize the fictive loyalists.
In many ways similar although with a softer message the Obama poster does the same. An attempt to create change, through a nonviolent democratic process. From the sense of a formal analysis while the image itself may not require any words to explain the message. I think the image of Obama and the message ‘hope’ is almost a restatement of itself as each could exist on their own and have a similar sentiment.
The image taken from an AP photographer (which would later become a litigious issue), was reduced to 4 colors and discarding shading and naturalistic colors. Edges were softened and estimated. I think this had the effect of deconstructing and transcending race. In many ways deconstructing and transcending the individual and like the words hope representing a concept. A concept that is mere abstraction, no longer are the details of Obama important just as the details of realistic space and naturalistic details of his face important. Obamas face in this image is nearly without expression. He has a stoic and pensive expression, not dictated by emotion, fear or joy but of steady leadership. His gaze is elevated above the viewer toward an imperceptible future where only ‘Hope’ exists.
