Towering floodlights on 11/11

Crisp blue skies.
Reminds me of my favourite Obama picture of 2008.

It is by Chris Milk and was taken in Montana.
I like it because it is so simple.

The popart "Hope" image created by Shepard Fairey for the campaign (and okayed by BO himself) worked on so many levels and has been, quite rightly, gushed over enough (hey, it even made an indirect appearance on "Blip of the Week").
Read the artist's own words on that here (very interesting reading).

But it was graphic art from a graffic artist.

Milk's is great photography. He makes a towering figure of Obama; Accentuates his tallness. The dark skin against the light shirt and white clouds stands out; The sleeves rolled up ready for action. The image of Black Panther-supporting African-American medal winners on the podium under the towering floodlights in Mexico 40 years ago springs to mind - but Obama's fist ain't gloved and clenched, it is open and reaching to the heavens. A beautiful, inspiring image.
That's my interpretation of it anyway.

It is an exquisite shot.

He published 2 other cracking shots of the man. This portrait (with light and shadow on his face just like Fairey's image) and this mystical barbeque shot (reminds me of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction and the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark). Both quality.

The Obama branding/design/PR/marketing team must be taking home some end-of-the-year awards but I guess you gotta speculate to accumulate. It wasnae cheap.

But that's all in the past now. The boy's got his work cut out. Now the graft begins.

This week he met numbnuts in the White House. Fuck me that must've been uncomfortable for him. Such a numpty.... probably still calling him "son".

And what of "Mr. 10%-approval-rating"? What's his legacy? I don't think it is Iraq, the economy or 9/11 - it is he-himself. He is his own legacy. Never in the history of the world has so much rested on a skull so numb.

I was thinking recently about preev-prez's defining moments....

Eisenhower - military-industrial complex? (He got that right eh.)
JFK - the Dallas motorcade?
Nixon - sweating like a mofo?
Reagan - "just say no to crack" or "tear down this wall"?
Bush Snr - gotta be his Simpsons/Waltons jibe
Clinton - unfortunately for him, "I did not have sexual relations.......etc"

But Bush Jnr's is poignant. It isn't so much his dumbass face when he's informed of 9/11 but the scenario he finds himself in; A schoolkid reading aloud from a childrens book the very moment America lost its innocence is so telling and compelling - you couldnae Hollywod-script-it.

I think Bush deserves his coupon on Mount Rushmore. Right in the corner. They should grow an evergreen tree out the top, proper Christmas-tree-style-triangle, then hang not a "W" but a big "D" over it.

Tobias Wolfe, I think, speaks for most Americans on the subject here.


Laters George.