I created this piece for a digital imagery class I took at college. We were asked to create a social awareness collage poster inspired by the artist Shepard Fairey, an artist known for his Barack Obama Hope poster. I chose to create a poster raising awareness to child abuse. I chose a number of different images to use for this piece, the background features a newspaper article about abuse in the Catholic church as well as a traditional catholic pattern. I overlayed these images with a jail cell image as well. I found the subject image before any of the other photographs and knew I had to use it. In Adobe Photoshop I took the image and created a smart filter to posterize it. I then added a red overlay to the boy as it allowed for a starker contrast compared to his natural color. The final part of the project was adding the word “hush” above the boy’s head to emphasize the stigma around keeping this kind of abuse silent. Before choosing this final design, I played around with a few different words as well as a poster without a word. I asked my classmates and professor which choice they liked best during class critique and they decided on this one.
