Barack Obama "Hope" poster

In October 2007, Shepard Fairey, who had created political street art critical of the US government and George W. Bush, discussed the Obama presidential campaign with publicist Yosi Sergant. Sergant contacted the Obama campaign to seek permission for Fairey to design an Obama poster, which was granted a few weeks before Super Tuesday. Fairey decided to create a portrait of Obama based on his feeling that his "power and sincerity as a speaker would create a positive association with his likeness". Due to the Obama campaign's concerns about the connotations of the word, Fairey changed the slogan printed under Obama's image from "" to "".According to design writer Steven Heller, the poster was inspired by social realism. Heller saw it as part of a tradition of contemporary artists drawing inspiration from political candidates and producing "posters that break the mold not only in terms of color and style but also in message and tone". Fairey cited a photo of John F. Kennedy and the image of Abraham Lincoln on the US five-dollar bill as inspirations. ==Distribution during the 2008 campaign==

Fairey began screen-printing posters soon after completing the design and showing it to Sergant. Initially, he sold three hundred fifty and put 350 more up in public. Beginning with that sale and continuing throughout the campaign, Fairey used proceeds from selling the image to produce more; after first printing, he made 4,000 more that were distributed at Obama rallies before Super Tuesday. He also put a printable digital version on his website. The image quickly went viral, spreading through social media and word of mouth. as well as clothing and other items with the image sold through Fairey's website. According to Fairey and Sergant, proceeds from sales of the image were used to produce more posters, stickers and other merchandise in support of the Obama campaign, rather than direct profit for Fairey. This portfolio was produced through a partnership between Gemini G.E.L. printing studio and the Democratic National Committee. The project supported the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. The Gold serigraphs were released just after Obama's inauguration, and are the third and final edition of Fairey's Hope prints of the president. According to Guardian journalist Laura Barton, the image had "acquired the kind of instant recognition of Jim Fitzpatrick's Che Guevara poster". In an interview with Esquire in 2015, Fairey said that Obama had not met his expectations as president, citing his use of drones and Domestic Spying. ==Parodies and imitations==

As the campaign progressed, many parodies and imitations of Fairey's design appeared. For example, one anti-Obama version replaced the word "" with "", while parody posters featuring opponents Sarah Palin and John McCain had the word "". In January 2009, Paste launched a site allowing users to create their own versions of the poster. More than 10,000 images were uploaded to the site in its first two weeks. Mad parodied the "" poster with an "Alfred E. Neuman for President!" poster. Alfred was on the poster, and the word "" was replaced with "". Anti-Gaddafi protesters in Chicago, in solidarity with the 2011 Libyan civil war, have co-opted the image. Dynamite Comics released a four-part crossover with Obama and Ash Williams of their Army of Darkness comics and the Evil Dead films. One of the issues covers had a picture of Ash Williams (played by Bruce Campbell in the films) in the style of the "Hope" poster with the bottom text reading "Hope?" Fairey was also commissioned to create a number of works in the same style. He produced two other versions, based on different photographs, officially on behalf of the Obama campaign, and another to serve as the cover of the Person of the Year issue of Time. He also created a portrait of comedian Stephen Colbert in the same style, which appeared in an issue of Entertainment Weekly honoring Colbert's television show The Colbert Report. Firas Alkhateeb, the student who designed the controversial Obama "Joker" image, cited Fairey as his greatest influence. Alkhateeb described the "Joker" image as a corrective to Fairey's glowing portrayal of Obama. Fairey said he did not agree with its political content, but that the "artwork is great in that it gets a point across really quickly". The September 2009 issue of The Advocate, America's oldest-continuing LGBT publication, featured a cover image similar to Fairey's design. The blue and red coloring was replaced with pink and purple, but instead of "", the caption was "". Jon Barrett, the magazine's editor-in-chief, said the cover expressed the frustration among some Democratic members of the LGBT community. The poster features a portrait of Frank L. Ridley, the actor who portrays Fulbright, with the words "SOLD," which refers to Fulbright's "honest" political message: "I'm only in this thing for the money, but at least I'm honest about it." Fairey's adaptation for the Occupy movement Sympathizing with the Occupy movement, in November 2011 Shepard Fairey introduced a variation of his "Hope" poster. In the new poster, he featured a Guy Fawkes mask, and the message "Mister President, we HOPE you're on our side", with the word "HOPE" in large font and the rest of the sentence in small font. The Obama campaign logo on the right was replaced by a similar logo with the inscription "We are the 99%". Protests against the Government of Australia In February 2015, online activism campaign abbottsolutelynot.com launched a donation service to publish billboards in Sydney with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's portrait captioned "HOPELESS". This was followed by posters of Liberal Party of Australia members, Treasurer Joe Hockey captioned "CLUELESS" and Attorney-General and Minister for the Arts George Brandis captioned ""HEARTLESS". The government had faced a spill motion earlier that month, and was later defeated in September 2015. ==Acquisition by Smithsonian==

On January 7, 2009, the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery announced it had acquired Fairey's hand-finished collage (stencil and acrylic on paper) version of the image (with the word ""), which the gallery said would go on display shortly before Obama's inauguration on January 20, 2009. The work was commissioned and later donated by art collectors Heather and Tony Podesta, the brother of Obama's transition co-chairman John Podesta. It is an unusual acquisition, in that the National Portrait Gallery normally collects official portraits as presidents are leaving office rather than before they take office. ==Origin and copyright==

The source photograph Fairey based the poster on was not publicly known until after Obama had won the election. After a mistaken attribution to Reuters photographer Jim Young for a similar-looking January 2007 photograph, in January 2009 photographer and blogger Tom Gralish discovered that the poster was based on an Associated Press (AP) photograph by freelance photographer Mannie Garcia. Garcia took the photograph at a 2006 media event with Kansas senator Sam Brownback, where the actor George Clooney was raising awareness of the War in Darfur after a trip to Sudan he had taken with his father. In February 2009, the AP announced that it had determined "that the photograph used in the poster is an AP photo and that its use required permission" and announced it was in discussions with Fairey's attorney. Fairey was represented by Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University. Falzone was quoted in the press release: "We believe fair use protects Shepard's right to do what he did here." In October 2009, Fairey admitted that he had based the poster on the AP photograph and had fabricated and destroyed evidence to hide the fact. Fairey's admission came after one of his employees told him that he had discovered relevant documents on an old hard drive. Realizing that these documents would reveal his cover-up, Fairey told the truth to his attorney. The AP and Shepard Fairey settled out of court in January 2011. In a press release, the AP announced that it and Fairey had "agreed to work together going forward with the Hope image and share the rights to make the posters and merchandise bearing the Hope image and to collaborate on a series of images that Fairey will create based on AP photographs. The parties have agreed to additional financial terms that will remain confidential." In a separate criminal action, federal prosecutors suggested that Fairey should face prison time for the destruction of evidence in the case, with the government sentencing request stating that "[a] sentence without any term of imprisonment sends a terrible message to those who might commit the same sort of criminal conduct. Encouraging parties to game the civil litigation system ... creates terrible incentives and subverts the truth-finding function of civil litigation." In September 2012, Fairey was sentenced to two years of probation, 300 hours of community service, and a fine of $25,000. ==Other works inspired by the "Hope" Poster==

In August 2024, Shepard Fairey, the creator of the original Barack Obama "Hope" poster, created a similar poster of Kamala Harris with the caption "Forward", in reference to Harris's campaign slogan "We are not going back." In October 2018 an online poster-creation tool called obamapostermaker.com was released by The Article 19 Group Inc. where users can import their own photo which can be edited along with a custom message to create an image in a similar style to the "Hope" poster. As of April 2025 it has been used almost 200,000 times by over 60,000 people. == Further reading ==