AP president and CEO Tom Curley may want to rethink suing Shepard Fairey for copyright infringement. I created this political portrayal of Curley by using a photo I downloaded from the Purdue University website. The photo contained no copyright notice, not that it matters. I still consider it fair use and the resulting image my own work of art. (Feel free to use this image at no cost. All I ask in return is that you credit me as the source.)The Associated Press (AP), who provides a large amount of the photos, film footage, and articles regurgitated by many major news sources, has charged artist Shepard Fairey with violating copyright law for using an AP photo to create his famous iconic Obama image which was used in the 2008 election campaign. Fairey sold some of his posters for thousands of dollars and now the AP wants a piece of the action.
Bull hockey!
AP director of media relations, Paul Colford, says he would like Fairey to settle with them over the photo rights.
That would be a mistake on many levels. Fairey should stick to his guns and defend himself for his rights as an artist to use this or any other image to create works of art. If AP wins this case, it will set precedent over gazillions of creative works. Suddenly, everyone will want a piece of the starving artist’s pie. The only reason the AP is coming out of the woodwork is because, aghast! Fairey has made actual money! Imagine that! An artist, making money! Wow! What an anomaly!
AP has written their own article explaining the issue on February 4, 2009. In this article, they show the two images.
I have to say, there really is very little similarity. Obama’s head is redrawn from scratch, angled slightly and foreshortened, with different coloration and background, so much that I feel it is completely altered (unlike the photo of Tom Curley above, which I altered in photoshop, but which I still feel is now my original artwork). It took the photographer a split second to take the photo of Obama. It took the artist, Shepard Fairey, countless hours (I would estimate 50 hours) to draw and make prints of his iconic Obama image. Can the two images really be considered as having similar value?
An excellent opinion piece explaining the details of the case is published in a Feb. 8, 2009 Huffington Post article by Jonathan Melber.
While in grade school a few decades ago, my art teacher told us kids about the “ten percent” rule. He pulled out old magazines, such as National Geographic, Time, US News and World Report, and People Magazine, and told us to freely use at will any of the images we found. “Just change them by 10 percent,” he said. “So it now becomes your original work inspired by their work.”
We all cut and pasted photos of this and that. One classmate took a photo of a geisha girl from National Geographic, blew her up very large, cropped her to her eyes, and redrew her in bright cherry red pastels. She got oodles of awards and kudos for her work. Another classmate did a pencil portrait of Bob Dylan. I drew an oil pastel of ET. Fortunately, Spielberg was not in the building or he might have wanted a cut of the $5 offered to me for it. No one questioned whether the works we’d slaved over for hours and hours were now our own creation or not.
Years later, while in a Sunday painters club, someone brought up the usage of photos for creating art works. “I was told to change them by 10 percent,” one artist said.
Yep, that’s what I was taught, too.
There’s a big difference between a “copy” and a “transformation.”
We can’t all be wrong, can we? Millions of artists over the past hundred years have been redrawing, altering, and transforming photos to create our very own works of art.
Will it end with artwork?
Can Saturday Night Live be sued for parodying movies and television shows, such as their skit making fun of the Today Show which aired on February 7th? What about quoting famous authors? The next time I’m hired to give an inspirational speech at a convention, will I have to first run my lines by Penguin Books? “Call me Ishmael. I’m quoting Moby Dick, today. Where do I send the royalty check?”
What about Obama? It’s his face! Can he sue AP for taking his photo and then charging money for it? Does AP own the image of Obama or does Obama own his own image? What about the National Press Club who held the event where the photo was taken? Shouldn’t they get a cut? Where does it all end? Does the almighty dollar rule over common sense?
Warning to Martha Stewart: Kraft is calling and wants you to stop making macaroni and cheese. “Yes, I know your recipe is different, but it’s based on ours. You’ll have to recall all the books and tear that page out of your cookbook.”
“Hello, Thomasville Furniture? Chippendale wants their couch back. Just ship them all into the warehouse at 9th and Virginia Avenue and we’ll dispose of them for you.”
What about the AP website? It looks eerily familiar. Perhaps some code was copied. Hmm…
Just the thought of all the possible “copyright infringements” is exhausting.
What kind of artwork do we want for the next generation to enjoy? Are artists going to be scared into creating unrecognizable blobs of paint in fear that they’ll be sued, just in case someone claims that the painting was based on their photograph. “What’s the name of this painting again? Snowman in a snowstorm?”
I hope Fairey sticks to his guns and doesn’t settle. I hope AP rethinks their charges. Artists of all kinds need to feel free to base their works of art on a variety of inspirations. What makes all creative works enjoyable is that connection between man and his environment. There’s nothing more rewarding than the discovery of new ideas assimilated from old, such as new scientific conclusions based on old theories. We don’t live in a vacuum. We are all interdependent upon each other’s thoughts and ideas which we use to form our own.
