Take a look at this Obama poster

There may be a small chance that I may get yelled at for copyright infringement. Lawyers or law buff may or may not agree, but I did get yelled at by at artist at the Seaway Art fair last year. Thankfully that artist wasn't there at the 2009 Seaway art fair, however, my mother made an important purchase in the form of this poster I snapped a pic of the day after Christmas.

2009 has been the year of Obama. Triumph with his historic election as the first African-American  President of the United States. During his brief term as our President we have seen many ups and downs and right now it looks like his popularity isn't so high as it was when he was starting his administration.

Of course I should say that when hope is very high and when that hope isn't met there is bound to be disappointment, right?

Either way, why do I post this poster. Well to start the artist, Keith David Conner, put a lot of black history into his painting, The Journey. We see black hands in shackles, workers in a cotton field, blacks in their caps and gowns (as I was this past May), and then blacks with pickets signs supporting candidates for Mayor, Senator, then President. We see a ballot with Obama's logo and then Obama taking the oath of office for the Presidency on top of the image of the White House.

The thing about this poster is that it almost reminds me of this genre referred to as socialist realism. If you want to see one example of this genre refer to this post I wrote about a former dictator of Romania.

Since socialist realism is often used to either promote socialism or as a propaganda tool for Communist regimes, that may not be the goal that Conner was going for. If nothing else the goal was to connect President Obama's ascension to the Presidency with Black history in America.

We see slavery, share cropping, activism and enfranchisement in this painting. And this is an important record of a major milestone achieved here in The States back in November 2008. This is why I suggest to my mother that she should buy this poster.

The next question by the next election day is how will American view Obama by 2012? Will we still see paintings like the one in poster form above? What do you think?