When I walk down the streets of Washington, D.C., I now rarely go a block without seeing a pater pasted onto a mailbox or lamppost. When I started looking for these posters in late 2022, they were hard to find. I would see some pasted around specific neighborhoods advertising specific events or movements, which would stay up, undisturbed, for months after the event had passed. Most of the information I received on political news, protests, and other forms of political involvement I found online. Especially following the pandemic, I maintained a heavy reliance on the social internet including social media, email newsletters, and the algorithmic Apple News app to stay informed. 

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In the 20th and 21st century, technology has been evolving rapidly. From the evolution of the digital era from standard webpages to Web 2.0 to curated ‘for you pages,’ the change happening in modern technologies has been staggering. The norms of protest and gathering practices has escalated quickly in kind. What started as word of mouth and phone trees has since evolved to best practices on social media. However, with hyper-personalized algorithms becoming standard, and social media companies like X and Instagram being owned by billionaires who profit from Trump friendly policies, there has been a new resurgence of analog field work in Washington, D.C. activism. This is especially true in protest art. In Washington, D.C., it now feels almost impossible to walk a block without seeing a wheat paste poster on a construction site or lamppost. These posters range from advertising neighborhood town halls to broadly criticizing Elon Musk, and range in artistic efforts. In a nation of increasing political divisiveness, this return to semipermanent and localized protest is meaningful. While many have examined the effect of ephemeral media like an Instagram story, the return to supplementing this ephemera with a tactile piece of artwork deserves more attention.  

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I became interested in this project after reading It Was Vulgar & It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic by Jack Lowery in the summer of 2022. Lowery’s book takes a detailed look into the artist collective Gran Fury, a group that worked within ACT UP to create a variety of protest art to raise awareness about the HIV/AIDs pandemic in the late 80s and early 90s. Lowery conducted interviews with many of the surviving members of Gran Fury, and compiled all the work they created. He took a linear view at the art they created, from the “Silence = Death” poster whose iconography is used to this day, to their “Kissing Doesn’t Kill” posters and bus ads and their controversial work in the 1990 Venice Biennale. He painted a compelling picture of their group, and the impact they made.  Fresh of the heels of the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the book resonated deeply with me. It detailed ways to make change even in the face of something that seemed insurmountable.  When I entered American Universtiy’s Literature, Culture, and Technology MA program, I continued engaging with Gran Fury’s work. I started to become fascinated by how their work directly connected to social change, and how their best work was often disseminated on the streets, rather than through any official channels they tried (more on this in my academic paper). 

 

I started making note of all the times I saw a wheat paste poster, like the ones that Gran Fury used. Before the second Trump administration, I saw a few for rallies and protests, and rarely some advertising concerts or other local art. After Trump took office in 2025, it seemed like the movement exploded. I started seeing wheat paste posters on construction sites, then windows, then on almost every lamppost in the city.  Even larger corporations started showing up, with advertisements for Sprite or Gracie Abrams occasionally replacing the posters that were socially oriented. Sometimes the amount of posters pasted on top of one another created an unintelligible mass. This resurgence of the wheat paste poster is when I began my research for this project. 

 

From March 2025 to March 2026, I conducted a collection project of these posters in Washington, D.C. I have visited a variety of neighborhoods throughout Washington, D.C. to collect over 200 instances of political wheat paste posters. Due to the nature of the medium, I am confident that there are many posters I did not capture. However, I aim to analyze specific instances of these posters and the impact of their overall appearance, alongside the rise in their popularity in the area. Therefore, while my photographs prove to be an incomprehensive guide to Washington, D.C. wheat paste posters, they will provide a basis to dissect the growing trend. 

 

In my academic essay, I apply the ideas of Harold Innis, Marshal McLuhan, and Uberto Eco and apply them to the medium of the wheat paste poster. Here, I look at how the function of the wheat paste poster as a medium now differs from how it functioned during the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The goal of this project is to provide insight on how the wheat paste poster is seeing a rise in popularity when someone could, with much less buy in, post on social media and potentially reach millions, when the wheat paste poster on a quiet street corner will reach infinitely less people. Still, with help from the frameworks of Innis, Marshal McLuhan, and Umberto Eco, I argue that the wheat paste poster has another impactful function of communication.

 

In my journalism essay, I explore how memory might connect to these wheat paste posters. I focus on why they are popular now, and how we might use them as viewers to gain a deeper understanding of our current political world, allowing us to slow down and remember past news cycles

 

Lastly, I provide an interactive map of these posters on this website, interspersed with more analysis of my documenting project from the past year. The goal of this final project is to allow further interaction with my photography project. Hopefully this will allow you, the reader, to come to your own conclusions on the posters that have consumed so much of my camera roll for the past year.  

 

With this project, I hope to provide different avenues for thinking about how wheat paste posters function in the 21st century. In my time in the Literature, Culture, and Technology program, I have worked to gain a deeper understanding about the scholarship surrounding form and imagined futures. This project is the culmination of these efforts. It digs into the research that I developed in multiple classes, and provides repeated lived examples of how the medium really does change the message through my three interpretations of this project. Looking forward, I aim for this project to show a collection of research effort and production, with a focus on reinterpretation, and how media impact our understanding of this research. As I look to continue my education, this research should show an ability to generate new knowledge through a synthesis of previous research. I also hope, as a Washington, D.C. resident and community member, that this project provides deeper insight on how movements function here today.