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Transcription: [00:09:11]
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"} That's a little introduction to my interest in this image. But I'm so struck by the fact that so many people have turned out to see it and to learn more about it that I'd be really thrilled to hear your feedback and to hear the impression that this image makes on you.

[00:09:31]
Are there questions or comments? Yes.

[00:09:36]
{Audience #1} What strikes me most about the portrait, is just the symmetry I...

[00:09:41]
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"} Uh huh

{Audience #1} Perfect symmetry.

{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"} Yes.

[00:09:43]
{Audience #1} Which...which spells balance, everything is just perfectly balanced. Every line on his cheek, his eyebrows, the ears, even the reflection of his eyes.

[00:09:53]
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"} Mhmm.

[00:09:54]
{Audience #1} It's...It's just perfect compared to [[McKay?]] for instance.

[00:09:58]
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"} Mhm

{Audeince #1} Now you can see a big difference in terms of the symmetry. It's just beautiful symmetry on the face.

[00:10:03]
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"} Absolutely I think that's a wonderful... I think it's a wonderful observation. And the question to which the photographer has influenced that with his.. with the composition. It's a wonderful comment! Thank you.

[00:10:18]
{Audience #2} Uh to me I uh I it strikes me that actually what we invest in the photo is perhaps more important than what comes out of the person, because I don't know that Barack Obama seems any more, has more gravitas than one of the portraits on the back wall of..of

[00:10:36]
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"} Mhm.

[00:10:37]
{Audience #2} Men who are

{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"} Yes.

[00:10:38]
{Audience #2} Also very serious and... and that particularly the one on the, in the middle on the right

[00:10:45]
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"} Uh huh

{Audience #2} Uh was not smiling at all so seems centered in himself and so on. To me it seems like this is partly a combination of the selection of the photographer and, we think this is a heavy dude. So tell me what, why this is, this does stick out that he is a heavy dude just on its own.

[00:11:04]
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"} Well it's interesting I think that wonderful observation about the symmetrical composition of the image and even the shape of his head within the frame I think is very interesting.

[00:11:15]
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"} Schoeller obviously is a contemporary photographer but I think he's very sensitive to the longer history of art.

[00:11:21]
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"} I think it's also really interesting in this case that he's made the choice to blow the image up to this monumental scale. And actually I..I realized that there was a quotation that I..I wanted to share with you: a comment by Barack Obama that actually ran in the article in which his image was featured, and I think maybe its worth sharing with you because it almost seems as though Obama was commenting on the phenomenon of having himself photographed in this fashion.

[00:11:52]
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"} He's in...so he said in 2004 "the reason you do this stuff is not to give a 15 minute speech, or to get your face in a magazine. There are l.. there are less painful and far more lucrative ways to do.. to be famous.

[00:12:11]
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"} You do this stuff because you care about the epic struggle to make America what it can be. That's the only reason, the only thing that justifies being involved in politics."

[00:12:24]
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"} And so actually maybe something else that strikes me about this image is that there doesn't seem, in this particular image, and maybe it actually differentiates it a little bit from the one that was published, there doesn't seem to me, to be a sense that Barack Obama is trying to please Schoeller, or that he's trying to pose in a fashion that is attractive or engaging.

[00:12:45]
{SPEAKER name="Anne Goodyear"} It seems to me rather that there's a sense of Obama asking us to come from...come to him, and to unpack this image. But I-I think your question is an excellent one. I think your question is an excellent one. Thank you very much! Uh huh.