Obama in Laser Art

The unpublished Laser-portrait of Obama

March 1, 2018, Denver, Colorado, USA:

Ten years ago in 2008, when Barack Obama was elected as the first African-American President of the USA, I celebrated the historic milestone by creating his portrait in two different unique media: (1) Seeds, and (2) Laser. I was debating which one to release that would represent him better.

I selected the portrait crafted with seeds, as I felt it was a more appropriate medium to represent Obama's down-to-earth vision that gave hope to the millions in the USA as well as across the world. My guess was right. The seed portrait of the people's president became instantly popular and went viral on the internet and was featured in the 2010 artbook "Designing Obama" by Scott Thomas, the design director of Obama's highly-successful 2008 campaign.

As I was recently going through my art collections, I came across the unpublished Laser portrait of Obama that I had passionately created by projecting it on a custom-made poster by me by collaging TIME magazine covers of several weeks of the era, all dealing with Obama and the other candidates of 2008 election - recording a piece of American history.

Today, as I see it, this portrait made with the cutting-edge technology of Laser is also a perfect fit to Obama's positive vision of the future where success in hightech, too, was a part of his timeless slogan, "Yes, we can!"

-Manick Sorcar