Barack Obama Impersonator Maxwell Price and Mitt Romney Impersonator Mike Cote Featured In Slugfest 2012 Photo On September Cover For The Atlantic Photographed By Alison Jackson
The art director on our Romney-vs.-Obama boxing-match photo shoot explains how it came together.
The brief
Every four years James Fallows previews the presidential debates. He's a big deal, it's a big deal. Four years ago the solution was to montage news shots of Obama and McCain on to a dramatic black background. It made, sense, looked good, a quick read—a successful cover. Let's do something like that.
The idea
How do we do a version that's relevant to this year? What's unique? It's going to be dirty. (Isn't it always?) So let's show them fighting. You know, really fighting. Illustration or photomontage? Remembered a shoot five or six years from New York magazine, where I then worked. British artist / photographer / provocateur Alison Jackson photographed lookalikes of Brad and Angelina with newborn baby. (Back then, Adam Moss, New York's editor, had wanted to get the first baby shots, scooping People, Hello, and US Weekly. Trouble was the baby hadn't been born and we didn't want to pay $6 million for first rights—not that it would be offered. Funny.) So that's our idea: a fight with lookalikes of Mitt and Barack going at it in a boxing ring.
