an analysis of the obama ‘hope’ poster in relation to visual and cultural theory

    The Obama ‘Hope’ poster was created in April 2008 by Los Angeles based artist Shepard Fairey. In one day the image was printed, taken to the streets and sold out of the original 350 copies. It was an overnight success and is widely regarded as an iconic poster, an assertion which can be supported by the fact that it is now available to purchase from numerous websites such as www.allposters.com. The poster is a particularly interesting one in that it can be set into an historical context of political art but was not initially commissioned as such. Fairey is a street artist who originally found recognition through his guerilla art campaign ‘Obey’ in which he fly-posted the urban environment with stickers instructing the viewer to obey, illustrated with the image of pro-wrestler Andre the Giant. On his website, www.obeygiant.com,  Fairey explains that his work was inspired by the concept of phenomenology, a philosophical doctrine that states all knowledge comes from sense perception. He continues to expound that...

..(t)he OBEY sticker attempts to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the sticker and their relationship with their surroundings. Because people are not used to seeing advertisements or propaganda for which the product or motive is not obvious, frequent and novel encounters with the sticker provoke thought and possible frustration, nevertheless revitalizing the viewer’s perception...

   It can be assumed that the Obey campaign left its audience to question ‘Obey who? What am I to obey?’ In a sense the Hope campaign is much more easily understood in that it has an obvious message even if it is not written out in so many words. Nevertheless, the purpose of the Obama poster is to provoke thought in the American electorate, and in doing so encourage the concept of hope to be almost subconsciously associated with the image of Obama. For this reason it could be argued that ‘Hope’ is a propaganda poster. In Ambrose and Harris’ Visual Dictionary of Graphic Design (2006, p.199) they explain that

The graphic arts have been used throughout history for propaganda purposes due to the undeniable power of imagery and symbols. Propaganda typically advances an ideal or threat that the provider hopes the public will buy into.

    The poster is indisputably a powerful one. Obama is depicted in a stylized stencil format of four colours; navy, pastel blue, cream and bright red, the colours of the American flag. He looks away from the viewer into the distance. It seems that Obama is looking towards the future, his gaze serious yet confident, with the message HOPE emblazoned across the bottom of the poster.

    The image itself works in frames of colour, from within the border of cream the light seems to fall to the right of Obama’s face. He looks away from this light, perhaps towards darker times ahead, yet the viewer is left with no doubt that he has hope for these darker times. The simplification of the shadows and light into flat fields of colour seems to signify that his message is a straightforward one: he is serious and he is contemplating his challenge with an optimistic outlook. The dark blue is used to define his features; a heavy brow denotes the magnitude of his task, his focused eyes and an ambiguously set mouth seem resolute yet neither negative nor defeated. 

     Despite only being four letters, the text of the poster is important in a semantic sense. Traditionally election campaign slogans are anodyne and simplistic, e.g.... ‘A vote for Bloggs is a vote for the future’, and, to an affluent white protestant American the Obama ‘hope’ message may have seemed no different. However, viewed through the eyes of a relatively underprivileged black under class it would say something quite different: here is a man who looks like you - vote for him and you can at last hope that you may be able to become as successful as him. In this way it becomes a very strong contextual message when related to the portrait of Obama looking handsome and reliable, almost like a film star. For example, most people would agree that George W. Bush looks like an idiot whatever he does, so placing him next to the word ‘Hope’ would probably be misinterpreted as a joke. Although it is perhaps unfair to judge people on their appearances, and unwise to trust these judgements, in doing so we highlight the significant relationship between the fittingly impressive appearance of Obama and the word Hope as a contributing factor to the success of the poster.

    The typeface used on the poster supports this powerful message of hope. Gotham, a strong slab sans serif,  was originally designed by Hoefler and Frere-Jones for GQ magazine but, as a result of Fairey’s poster, is now more often associated with the Obama administration and indeed is used repeatedly by them. Of the font Hoefler and Frere-Jones (www.typography.com) commented:

‘From... humble beginnings comes Gotham, a hardworking typeface for the ages... Gotham inherited an honest tone that’s assertive but never imposing, friendly but never folksy, confident yet never aloof.”

    

    These factors make Gotham the perfect typeface for the Obama presidency campaign; it could have been designed for it. The use of Gotham in this work creates authority; a bold and assertive statement, no question mark, no hesitation or doubt. Obama has hope, he is confident of change and progress and he wants you to feel the same, to share his vision of a better future for America. The only odd thing about the choice of Gotham as a typeface is the name itself - Gotham is a word traditionally associated with despair and ruin, especially in America where Gotham city is the bleak setting for the crime ridden world of Batman and also a derogative nickname for New York City. It would be interesting to know whether Hoefler and Frere-Jones knew of this connotation when naming their typeface.

   To put the poster into an historical context is to draw on the obvious relation it has to the iconic Che Guevara poster. The Guevara poster was created in 1968 by Jim Fitzpatrick, and was, as with Fairey’s poster, based on a photograph, in this instance taken by Alberto Korda in 1960. The parallels are numerous - the political agenda, the stencil style of a limited palette and the resolute expression on both men’s faces as they stare into the distance. Perhaps the only comparison that cannot be drawn is between the parties’ political agenda: although Obama’s policies could be described as left of middle they are still far from the revolutionary Communism of the Cuban government. One could imagine that the Republicans may have sought solace in these Communist connotations, believing a candidate with such an outrageous political agenda to be unelectable. As with the Guevara poster before it, the Obama poster has been subverted many times by his opponents to change its meaning, as in the case where the word Hope was replaced with Hype (www.thesaloon.net) In a similar way the poster has been adapted to parody Obama’sopponents, notably Sarah Palin and John McCain, whose faces have been given the Fairey treatment and teamed with the word ‘Nope’ in place of ‘Hope’.

    Fairey’s ‘Hope’ poster is an interesting example of authorship in that it came in to question when it was discovered that the poster was based on a photograph by the Associated Press’ Mannie Garcia, who requested compensation for the unauthorised use of his work. In response Fairey sued for declaratory judgement because he believed that his poster was fair use of the original image. In an article by Jenna Wortham (www.wired.com) Fairey comments that ‘ I have not kept one dime from the Obama (posters) ... I have given the max amount to the campaign.’ His motive was not financial gain but to spread a message he believed in. In response, in an article by Randy Kennedy in The New York Times (2009), Garcia has said that he is ‘so proud of the photograph and that Fairey did what he did artistically with it, and the effect it’s had,” but that he did not “condone people taking things, just because they can, off the Internet.” So in fact it seems that Garcia’s issue was a point of principle rather than a dissatisfaction at the way the original photograph was appropriated. In this way the Obama poster is a perfect example of the move away from the traditional concept, as understood at the dawn of capitalism, of author as divine creator and towards the more current practise of dialogical authorship in which an artist, for example Korda or Garcia, put their work into circulation for it to join, whether they approve or not, a bigger scheme, a world of Google Images (where Fairey found Garcia’s photograph) and a world in which art is perpetually subverted as part of a bigger and constantly changing dialogue. In spite of this it should be noted that Fairey does now reference Garcia’s original photograph in his ‘Hope’ posters.

    Fairey may seem an odd choice of artist for the Obama campaign to use as a representative for its cause: Fairey, often described as the U.S. equivalent of Bansky, is no stranger to the law for his repeated offences of illegal fly-posting. In fact his work exemplifies the forward thinking attitude of the new age of Democratic power under Obama’s administration: it is anti-traditionalist, anti-conservative and, most relevantly, anti-Republican. The poster ‘Hope’ is polemic art: there is no rationalisation as to why the word hope should be associated with Obama, rather it works by provoking a visceral association - it incites an instinctive response rather than an intellectual one, in a similar way to the phenomenological ‘Obey’ campaign, and as such has succeeded in achieving its aim.