Didn’t Fairey get in trouble for stealing the base photo for that from AP?
Shepard is a HACK as an artist. He swipes MOST of his source materials. Some of it from Communist and even NAZI propaganda.
Run it through a simple filter in a graphics program, add a post-modern bit of agit-prop. Then press “print” and ask your socialist followers to bestow large amounts of cash on you for “fighting the system, man!”.
He may have caught flak from the AP, but in this one they can pound sand. Obama is a public figure, whatever any of us may think of him, and photos like that are public domain for artists to make use of. If that one dude can put a pic of christ in a jar of piss, than color manipulating a photo of the one should be ok...