The Street Artist Who Won’t Quit: The Story Of Shepard Fairey

The Stylistic Choices Of The “Hope” Poster

“I wanted to make an image that deracialized Obama, where he’s not a black man, but a nationalized man. And then, secondly, when a person is turned into a stylized or idealized icon, it means that someone has decided that the person is worthy of this treatment, and the viewer then maybe takes a step back and says, ‘Well, they’ve been validated by someone, so maybe I should look at them a little more closely and decide whether they’re worthy of that validation,'” Fairey explained to Interview. While the work is stylistically similar to the rest of his work, Fairey decided to use a different, more patriotic color scheme.