PHILADELPHIA, PA (January 15, 2009) – By now it's safe to bet that most of the world has seen artist Shepard Fairey's "Hope" poster of President-elect Barack Obama, but did you ever wonder who the photographer is whose picture was the basis of the artist's work?
Also, isn't it a bit strange that up until now no one's even asked?
Well, Philadelphia Inquirer staff photographer Tom Gralish has been wondering about it, and last night he figured it out. To be accurate, he and a computer programmer – Mike Cramer – who works out of his home just a few blocks from the newspaper, and is a reader of Gralish's blog, figured it out.
It's a question Gralish has been pondering since last year when the "Hope" poster showed up plastered on walls in West Philadelphia before the state's primary election. Gralish blogged about it at the time, and Cramer bookmarked his blog. This week Cramer says he was "avoiding doing some work" and Googled "Obama 2007" and looked at images just one more time ... and it appeared "on page 20-something."
Fairey, the artist, is known for using photographic images and "repurposing" them in his work, along the lines of Andy Warhol's famous use of Campbell's soup cans and Gene Korman's publicity shot of Marilyn Monroe as the basis of his pop culture screenprints.
Fairey's "Hope" poster image is also used this month on the cover of Esquire magazine, re-titled "What Now?," and the artist also did Time magazine's "Person Of The Year" cover of Obama, from a a different picture this time but in the same style as his "Hope" poster. (Wonder who shot that photo?)
Yesterday when Cramer told Gralish about what he found, Gralish checked it out and then he talked to the photographer and the photographer's boss, who both followed the same steps Gralish and Cramer did and confirmed it: the picture was taken by Reuters photographer Jim Young, and confirmed by Young and Reuters picture editor for the Americas, Gary Hershorn.
Young's photo was flipped horizontally, and stretched a bit, but sure enough ... it matches Fairey's poster.
Read Gralish's blog here to see how they figured it out.
Obama's "official" photographic portrait by Pete Souza was released this week.
