AP Wants Credit and Compensation for Iconic Obama Image

Methinks that horse has left the barn. Wonder if they'll go after the Obamicons.

NEW YORK- On buttons, posters and Web sites, the image was everywhere during last year's presidential campaign: A pensive Barack Obama looking upward, as if to the future, splashed in a Warholesque red, white and blue and underlined with the caption HOPE.

Designed by Shepard Fairey, a Los-Angeles based street artist, the image has led to sales of hundreds of thousands of posters and stickers, has become so much in demand that copies signed by Fairey have been purchased for thousands of dollars on eBay.

The image, Fairey has acknowledged, is based on an Associated Press photograph, taken in April 2006 by Manny Garcia on assignment for the AP at the National Press Club in Washington.

The AP says it owns the copyright, and wants credit and compensation. Fairey disagrees.

The mystery of the Obama Hope photo source

By GottaLaff

James Danziger, over at the Daily Beast, found the original photographer of the now-famous image used in the Fairey poster of Obama that we've all Obamicon'd. The guy had no idea it was his photo:

Reuters was initially—and understandably—put out that they hadn’t been credited as the original source of what turned out to be the presidential campaign’s most enduring visual image, but no laws had been broken.

Like it or not, Fairey's use of the picture is well within the parameters of what’s considered "fair use." His transformation of the image—flipping and re-orienting it, adding jacket, tie and the "O" Obama logo, and converting it to his block print style—make it consistent with all legal precedents for public use. (Fairey is the artist behind the now-famous Andre the Giant prints that are probably wheat-pasted all over your city.)

But perhaps the best proof that Fairey transformed the photo into something all his own is that Young, a Washington-based photographer who has taken, in his words, “thousands” of pictures of Obama, was not even aware that the most ubiquitous image of the election was based on his photograph. He’d seen the HOPE poster countless times and never made the connection to his own photograph, which he snapped at a 2007 Senate confirmation hearing.

Go read the whole article to follow the winding trail to the oblivious photographer. Imagine, not realizing it was your photo that was plastered everywhere on the Blogosphere and well, everywhere else.

I may take credit for an updated version of the Mona Lisa. I'll give her a new outfit, flip and re-orient, add a touch of make-up to her sly smile, and block print it. I could make a fortune! Anyone else in?

It would be like putting lipstick on a painting.

Poster Boy Bill

By GottaLaff

Obamicon Me taken to a whole new level

Remember Obamicon Me? Where you can make your own Shepard Fairey poster? I have a feeling the site crashed due to the inappropriate nature of the above effort.

H/t: Eve

Obamicon me

By GottaLaff

First we had this:

Then we had this:

Now we have this:

I made mine. Now go make your own Obamicon.