The Annotated Obama Poster

Authors

Ben McCorkle, The Ohio State UniversityFollow

Abstract

For this piece, I wanted to share some observations about Shepard Fairey's iconic poster given the timeliness of the text, not only in the wake of the 2008 presidential campaign, but also because of the still-pending Fair Use lawsuit against the Associated Press, the recent installation of the poster in the Smithsonian, and the debut of Fairey's "Supply and Demand" exhibition currently on display at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art. Additionally, I wanted to comment on the piece in a way that was not only visually interesting -- thus the annotated break-out commentary -- but also in a way that packaged rhetorical analysis in a more accessible manner for a general readership.

A PDF capturing the annotated poster is downloadable and embedded below.

For the original annotated interactive poster, see the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine capture:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170223234607/http://harlotofthearts.org/issues/issue_2/mccorkle/obama-poster/index.htm

About the Author(s)

Ben McCorkle is an Assistant Professor of English (Rhetoric and Composition) at The Ohio State University at Marion.

Rights

Fair Use Statement

Use of Shepard Fairey's poster falls under fair use, because the project is a critique of the work.

DOI

10.15760/harlot.2009.2.7

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/39381

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Recommended Citation

McCorkle, Ben (2009) "The Annotated Obama Poster," Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion: No. 2, 7.
https://doi.org/10.15760/harlot.2009.2.7