This is the most fascinating image I was able to make during seven days of shooting in New York City. Walking through the Bowery with fellow pbase photographers Tim May and Judy Tillinger, I came upon this spontaneous, layered, and ultimately accidental work of art on the wall of a building at the corner of The Bowery and Houston Street. It all begins at the top, with the remains of a Barack Obama campaign poster by street artist Shepard Fairey. Another street artist later “enhanced” it with vivid red, brown, and green coloration. Such modification is only fair, after all, because Fairey himself had based his poster on AP photographer Mannie Garcia’s shot of Obama at a press conference. Time, chance, and the weather then complete the picture before us. Additional posters and ads were later pasted over the enhanced Obama poster – the intersection of The Bowery and Houston Street is one of the busiest on the Lower East Side, and that wall is a prime spot for advertisements. On the day I appeared with my camera, those posters and ads were in shreds. Yet the top of Obama’s heroic visage can still be seen, rising above a world of chaos. A bit of bold graffiti comes into play as well – a steel plaque commemorating artist Keith Haring’s famous Bowery Mural a few yards to the west, has been obliterated by an indecipherable scrawl. And even that seems quite fitting. When Obama thanked Fairey for contributing the poster to his campaign, he told him “your images have had a profound effect on people, whether seen in a gallery or on a stop sign.” Fairey responded by noting “…and that thing about stop signs? He’s kind of endorsing graffiti, isn’t he?” My own image finds shadows that add dimension, sculpting the torn posters and ads into abstract art. I add still another layer of expression, and in the process, I close the circle with photography. What began with Mannie Garcia’s image of Obama has ultimately become my own photograph of Obama Rising, with Shepard Fairey, the sun, wind, rain, and various unknown graffiti artists acting as my transformational agents.