A Message For Obama: The Book

Three weeks ago, I contributed a picture to the A Message For Obama Flickr group. I’d received an invitation to join the group from Meg and it seemed like an interesting idea. There were just over twenty existing photos in the pool when I added mine. I watched in amazement over the next few days as new submissions were added by the minute.
The following week, I was delighted to receive a message from The Guardian, requesting permission to include my contribution in a book that it was planning to publish based on the group’s images. Any hesitation on my part – purely on grounds of bashfulness – was quelled when I read that profits would be donated to the organisation’s Katine project.
The book was published yesterday. This morning I fired off a few questions to Meg – who is not just the founder of this Flickr group, but also The Guardian’s head of communities – to explore the background and progress of this fascinating phenomenon. Her responses convey her obvious enthusiasm for both the concept and its execution.
How did the original idea come about?
The essence of the idea was to see if we could capture reaction to Barack Obama’s presidential victory in a creative way – the day after the result, it seemed like everyone was talking about it in our offices, in our social networks (Twitter, Facebook and the like) and online. It was really interesting that people were sharing such personal thoughts and reflections about and reactions to the election result in very public spaces, and we decided to see if we could create a space where they could be collected together – Flickr was the obvious place. It started with a few of us taking pictures around the Guardian offices (I think mine was the first in the group we created – it said “Please don’t fuck it up” which is genuinely what I was worried about especially on the back of all the euphoric celebrations the night before).
Did you expect so many images to be added to the pool so quickly?
No, that was amazing. When I created the group, I sent invitations to a number of my contacts on Flickr who I thought might be interested, and it obviously struck a chord because they started adding images straight away. The real bump came when Heather Champ (community manager at Flickr), who had been invited and added her own image, featured it on the Flickr blog. Suddenly, pictures came pouring in from all corners of the world.
At what point did the book concept emerge?
Quite quickly – within a couple of days, really. Once we saw the amazing variety and quality of messages and photos we were inspired to find a way to make something tangible out of it. Normal publishing deadlines mean that books can take a long time to turn around (months, in some cases) and can present a financial risk to the publisher (you have to decide how many copies to print in advance, and then there are marketing and distribution costs). We realised that it would be possible to use Blurb, a print-on-demand service, to publish quickly and print copies only as people ordered them, which meant it was possible to get something out within weeks, not months. That’s important when you’re surfing on zeitgeist!
Did most of the people who you approached grant permission for their image(s) to be used?
Overwhelmingly, yes. I sent requests to 163 people and received 155 positive replies – and the other eight didn’t answer. People seemed to be really happy to collaborate on this project, and I’m sure the promise of a free book didn’t sway them at all…
What lessons have been learned from “using content-gathering and publishing techniques we have never tried before” [a quote from Emily Bell's blog post]?
First of all, I think there’s a difference between content-gathering and creative collaboration. Setting a creative challenge and seeing how people interpret it isn’t new, but doing it at such scale and in a way which respects people’s opinions and interpretations can be hard. It emerged quite quickly that we needed to be fairly strict about the format of submissions, not because of the book but because without clear focus, it could very easily turn into a repository for people’s images of election lines, Obama t-shirts, candles, maps of the US, kittens, sunsets, and so on – and there are loads of groups for that stuff already. So we settled on a very clear premise: is it a personal message to the president-elect? Then it’s fine. If not, then it’s out. So that was the first lesson – a ruthless focus at the start takes time and effort to establish but ultimately makes it easier for others to see how they can contribute, and becomes self-policing quite quickly.
Secondly, we realised how important it was to tread carefully. As a passionate photographer and Flickr user myself, I was super-sensitive to the possibility of people feeling exploited by bigmeeja, and so we did everything possible to respect people’s rights and views, asked permission to feature their images and talked to them about the process and the big picture. I’ve been on the receiving end of mails from media organisations saying “Can we use this picture?” but without a clue what for, or how it would be portrayed or anything. I wanted to avoid that sort of cluelessness.
The third lesson learnt from this project was that publishing something using proprietary software can be a somewhat temper-fraying, nail-biting experience…
What has been the most striking aspect of this project for you personally?
The amazing creativity and thoughtfulness of contributions to the pool has been incredibly inspiring. It would have been easy to have ended up with a thousand webcam pictures of people with their thumbs up saying “nice one!” but actually, people have found interesting ways – and words – to express their hopes and fears about an Obama presidency.
Do you have a favourite image (apart from mine, obviously)?
Well, yours is brilliant, obviously… but it’s difficult to choose a favourite, as you can imagine. I particularly like this strong image – it was the first submission to the pool to really use the body in an interesting way of delivering a message (and I really like the little added bit on the thumb). I love this one, this one and this one, either for image quality or because of the particular messages, which capture the zeitgeist particularly strikingly. But I also love the spirit of this one, which didn’t make it into the book, unfortunately.
Is there potential for a whole series of A Message For… projects, or is this strictly a one-off?
That’s a good idea! We have no immediate plans to repeat the experiment, but you never know when another opportunity might present itself. One of the most important things about A Message for Obama was that it provided a creative outlet at a very particular time, when people were full of opinions and reactions – I’m not sure it would work as well at any other random time. Right idea, right medium, right time.
That conclusion strikes a chord. Occasionally I find the ephemerality of blogging a little frustrating. Recently I’ve been starting to get myself involved in other media (in the broadest sense of the word) that produce a more physical end-result. That’s why I’m pleased to be involved in this book, quite apart from its potential benefit to Katine.
Time will tell what Barack Obama makes of his tenure of the US Presidency. However, this project provides an enduring snapshot of a moment when people felt that the likelihood of change was sufficiently strong to motivate them to make a direct, online address to one of the world’s most influential figures. You can preview and buy the book here.