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<a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-01-19/who-took-the-presidential-campaigns-most-famous-photo" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">
</a><span style="font-weight: bold">Obama Photo Mystery Solved!</span>
<span style="font-style: italic">by James Danziger</span>
<span style="font-style: italic">James Danziger was the Director of Photography at the London Sunday Times Magazine, Features Editor of Vanity Fair, and Director of Magnum New York. He runs the gallery Danziger Projects in New York and blogs at The Year in Pictures.</span>
<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'"> After months of searching, I identified the photographer behind the picture that became the campaign’s most enduring image. Even he didn’t know he had taken it.
I believe that last week I solved the biggest photographic mystery of the 2008 election: I found the photographer who took the photo that was the source for Shepard Fairey’s iconic Obama HOPE prints.
My search began last fall, when I recognized that Fairey’s prints were becoming the definitive visual of the campaign, and I began asking everyone from Amanda Fairey, the artist’s wife, to Holly Hughes, the editor of Photo District News, if they knew who took the original photo. No one could seem to pin it down. Shepard Fairey was on record as saying it came from a Google Image search, but couldn’t (or wouldn’t) track it back to the source.</span>
