Examine a Printed Poster by Artist Shepard Fairey

Before reading about this image, see what you can discover just by looking closely. Use the following questions to guide you.

• Describe what you see in as much detail as possible. What shapes, colors, and textures stand out to you?
• Fairey often uses only a few colors in his work. What colors do you see here, and what mood or feeling do they create?
• The person’s face is partly covered, and his eyes look away from the viewer. What effect does this have on how you see him? Does hiding his face make him feel more anonymous, more symbolic, more threatening, or something else?
• This image uses the American flag as part of the design. What are some different ways you could interpret the flag’s presence here?

Read About the Poster

In 2020, Shepard Fairey released American Rage, an offset lithograph poster based on South Central Los Angeles, August 15, 2014, an original photograph by Ted Soqui. The photograph was taken during a protest in South Central Los Angeles, in August 2014, and depicts a young demonstrator wearing an American flag-patterned bandana across his face. The demonstrator’s bandana functioned as protection against tear gas, a mask, and a statement of solidarity with protesters around the world who had adopted the same gesture. By the time Fairey published the print, the United States was in the midst of another wave of protests against police violence, making the image feel strikingly current even though the photograph that inspired it had been taken nearly six years earlier.

Fairey layered photographs from the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising into the background. On March 3, 1991, Rodney King, a Black motorist, was pulled over after a high-speed chase and beaten by LAPD officers, an assault captured on video by a bystander and broadcast nationwide. When a jury acquitted the four officers in April 1992 despite that footage, the verdict set off six days of unrest across Los Angeles that left dozens dead and caused widespread destruction. King’s beating and the subsequent trial became a flashpoint in the national conversation about police violence against Black Americans.

Fairey has said he remembers feeling “enraged” when the officers who beat King went unpunished despite video evidence, and that he felt renewed hope, nearly three decades later, watching people take to the streets again after George Floyd’s death. Floyd, a Black man, died on May 25, 2020, after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for over nine minutes during an arrest, an act recorded on video by a bystander and witnessed by onlookers who pleaded with the officer to stop. Floyd’s death sparked protests across the United States and around the world that summer, intensified the Black Lives Matter movement, and prompted renewed scrutiny of police use-of-force practices; the officer was later convicted of murder. Placing the 1992 photographs behind the 2014 protester argues that these two moments are part of the same unfinished story, an idea Fairey ties to a broader belief that protest is “as American as apple pie.”

Compare Images of the Same Protester

Look closely at Shepard Fairey’s American Rage alongside the photograph that inspired it by Ted Soqui. As you compare the images, write or discuss your responses to the questions below.

Questions

• What details stayed the same between the photograph and the print? What details changed?
• Which version feels more immediate or emotionally powerful to you—the photograph or the print? What specific visual elements contribute to that feeling?
• Look at the color choices in each image. How does the mood shift between the photograph and the print?
• Fairey added a background and text that the photograph doesn’t have. What do those additions contribute to the image? Is anything lost as a result of this modification?
• A photojournalist like Soqui aims to document a real event as it happened. An artist like Fairey aims to make a statement. Keeping that difference in mind, what impact did each artist intend their image to have on their audience? How might either image serve as a counter-narrative to highlight an injustice experienced by a marginalized community?

Although Fairey based his print on Soqui’s photograph, he also transformed it. He reduced the image to high-contrast shapes in red, black, gold, and cream, using the visual language of protest posters and propaganda graphics. While Soqui’s photograph documents one person on one afternoon, Fairey’s version turns that person into a symbol, a figure meant to represent an ongoing struggle rather than a single moment.

Dig Deeper

Bring together your close examination of these two images with a deeper analysis. Write or discuss your responses to the following questions.

• Fairey layered photographs from 1992 into the background of a 2014 protest image and published the print in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter protests. What effect does it have to combine three different moments from history into a single artwork? How does it shape the way you understand each event on its own?
• The demonstrator’s flag-patterned bandana is central to the image. Knowing it served as both protection from tear gas and a statement of solidarity and defiance, how does that double meaning affect how you read the images?
• The title American Rage connects anger with American identity. Why do you think Fairey chose to frame rage this way? To what extent do you agree or disagree that anger can be a reasonable, even patriotic, response to injustice faced by historically marginalized people?

A movement and organizing framework that emerged in 2013, founded by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin. The movement calls attention to violence and systemic racism experienced by Black communities in the United States, particularly around policing, and has organized major protests following incidents such as the killings of Michael Brown (2014), Ezell Ford (2014), Breanna Taylor (2020), and George Floyd (2020). BLM is both a specific organization and a broader slogan/movement used by many different groups and individuals, whose views on tactics and goals vary.

A story, perspective, or account that challenges and offers an alternative to a dominant, mainstream, or “master” narrative.

The qualities, expressions, beliefs, physical traits, cultures, and social statuses that comprise a person and/or group of people.

In different contexts, “justice” refers to both moral correctness and fairness, and also the rule of law. By contrast, “injustice” usually describes unfairness.

Pushed to the outside of a group or put in an unimportant or powerless position within it.

A commercial printing process in which an image is transferred from a metal printing plate to a specially formulated rubber surface, and then onto paper.

Visual or written communication used to persuade someone or encourage an opinion.