Giant Portrait By Jorge Rodriguez Gerada

Rodriguez-Gerada has always been fascinated by aerial photography and land art. With the advent of Google Earth and Google Maps he decided to begin working at a scale large enough to allow his images to be seen from space. His first project to utilize this direction was “Expectation”
EXPECTATION is a large ephemeral sand painting portraying the likeness of Barack Obama, that was created in the Catalan city of Barcelona, Spain. On November 3, the day before the US elections, the Expectation project was presented at a press conference in Barcelona, Spain: a 2.5 acre (one hectare) sand painting of Barack Obama made with 650 tons of sand and gravel. Given its location and scale, the project was meant as a reflection of the global impact of that election. It was created using a vector graphic and approximately 650 tons of sand. People from all walks of life came together to make Expectation a reality. They struggled against a tight production schedule, zero budget and four consecutive days of torrential rain. In spite of all the difficulties, the Expectation project struck a chord throughout the world, thanks to the huge amount of international media coverage (CNN, Reuters, AP, etc).