THE BARACK OBAMA PROJECT
(Chicago, 2008)

Series of one thousand unique pins featuring cutouts from a thousand different pictures of Barack Obama’s skin. The pins were offered to everyone visiting the Obama campaign Chicago headquarters on the night of the Pennsylvania elections for the Democratic presidential candidate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. This project was the second in a triptych concerning the mediation of the so-called “race issue”: the persisting race and class difference in America, the role of photographic representation of the Democratic nominee Barack Obama in relation to the O.J. Simpson case, and the controversies relating to a Clinton campaign TV ad depicting him “more black” than he would “really” be.

The project treated photography from an ethical viewpoint, as a statement, and not from a “neutral” technical perspective as “objective registration.” By allowing individual visitors to choose a free pin each, they were faced with the dilemma similar to the one of Barack’s photographers: the choice for one specific picture is comparable to the choice for one pin conforming to the individual supporter’s image of Obama. For example, African American visitors often made their selection on the basis of their most clearly expressed feature: a skin color matching their own.

Concept and production in cooperation with Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei