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I ran into this photograph last week at Platform Gallery and couldn't help but think of Obama's campaign and its bubble of hope.

The picture was taken (by the artist Adam Ekberg) in an emptied-out Chicago apartment. Ekberg worked for hours to get a bubble right in the center of the frame at the moment when he took the picture, so that it would be hanging there as fragile as anything but forever intact—just so. The angle of the sun means it's a little late in the day; in this apartment someone has moved out but no one has moved in yet. This is a national portrait of today, January 19, 2009. Tomorrow will be different.