There’s been some question ever since Shepard Fairey’s iconic Barack Obama “Hope” poster went public about who shot the original photo that inspired the artwork. For a while, it was thought to have been photographed by Reuters photographer Jim Young. But today, an insightful Kottke reader reveals that Tom Gralish of the Philadelphia Inquirer has found the exact image that Fairey’s poster was based off of. And all it took for Tom to discover the truth was several pages of Google Image search.

The famous photograph turned into poster art by Shepard Fairey was taken by Associated Press freelancer Mannie Garcia. The photo dates back to April 2006 where Mannie Garcia was on assignment to photograph a press conference with George Clooney and then-Illinois-Senator Barack Obama. Clooney was talking about a recent trip to Darfur and Barack Obama just happened to be sitting next to him and that’s the exact place where the photograph came into existence.

Remarkably, the website that is hosting the AP/Mannie Garcia image, PennLive, has the full-resolution image — including all attached file info metadata — available for retrieval. I’ve included it here too, so if you really want it, you can click the image above to get it.