Obama Gothic and other eye candy

This cellphone-fuzzy Grant Wood appropriation comes courtesy of an anonymous artist at this past weekend's Artists Against AIDS show. It was only a matter of time, wasn't it? (No, I didn't buy it - we settled for a lovely vase instead). But Obama Gothic makes a good enough epigraph for today's post, I suppose, in which I would like to offer an official mea culpa for being less-than-devoted to first efforts lately (blogos offers a nice model apology for me to crib from). Excuses abound. It's April. I'm blowing all my good visual politics stuff on my students. I'm still figuring out the Facebook/first efforts division of labor. Oh, and there's the little fact of my job. And did I mention it's April?

In any case, here are a few things I'm ruminating about lately. All more or less blogworthy, I hope...

• I'm pleased with how well the BAGnewsSALONs have been going (transcript of the most recent Salon available here). What a pleasure to gather live, online, to discuss visual politics with accomplished photojournalists and scholars. Plug: next Sunday night, May 3, 7 pm CST I'll be moderating a Salon devoted to Obama's first hundred days and loaded with very special guests. Stay tuned!

• These days I'm keeping an eye out for images showing the interior of the Obama White House; I'm hatching a little project on the visual politics of White House art.

• Along with some of my visual politics colleagues, I've been thinking a lot lately about the resurgence of the slideshow as a visual form. Not your parents' trip-to-the-Grand-Canyon snoozefest, but the sculptured, scripted, arranged, linear unfolding of pictures favored not only by news sites but also the Obama White House. I have been invited to do a visual politics gig at Texas A&M's Obama conference next spring; when I'm there I'll likely spend some time thinking out loud about the slideshow form.

Comments

[c...]

re: #2. I assume you've seen the most recent Time? Has a number of photos inside, not a lot of white house wall shown, but there might be something there for you.

[caraf]

Great tip, C., thanks. I need to pick up the mag. version. Here's the URL to the slideshow: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1893255,00.html

[c...]

wow. tons more photos there, obviously, and some less cropped versions of ones that did make it into the print version. And, since you mentioned it here, I paid more attention to the art on the walls. There's some really amazing work the Obamas get to hang out with on a daily basis... I recognized, but couldn't place the impressionistic one of a flag-lined street just to the left of the desk in the Oval Office...