Wow, AP Suing Shepard Fairey Over Derivative Image of President Obama

[CraftyGal]

AP Suing Shepard Fairey Over Derivative Image



I can’t say that I’m at all surprised that the AP has decided to take legal action about Shepard Fairey’s use of one of their images in what has now become an iconic portrait of our new president. The “Hope” image that become an overnight sensation originated as a photograph taken by a temporary photography working for the Associated Press–and they are seeking compensation and credit for the image.

Here’s a snip of the AP (har!) article about the issue:

The AP says it owns the copyright, and wants credit and compensation. Fairey disagrees.

“The Associated Press has determined that the photograph used in the poster is an AP photo and that its use required permission,” the AP’s director of media relations, Paul Colford, said in a statement.

“AP safeguards its assets and looks at these events on a case-by-case basis. We have reached out to Mr. Fairey’s attorney and are in discussions. We hope for an amicable solution.”

Wow, the AP is very legalistic isn't it! All he wanted to do was support his candidate.

Crafty

[ContinentalOp]

1. Wow, very interesting. I support the AP's side of this, and kind of wondered where Fairey...

got the image. That's pretty damn sleazy of him. I mean he pretends to be Mr. guerilla street art man but the dude designed the damn Mountain Dew logo! The least he can do is license the image that he's going to trace. I mean, sure if you're going to put some stickers of Andre the Giant up on phone booths you're not going to get in trouble but you're going to steal a photo from the A.P. to use for an assignment given to you by a Presidential campaign! WTF is this guy thinking?

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

3. Agreed.

[blogslut]

4. The Obama campaign did not commission that poster

Fairey created it on his own time. Later, after the poster became popular, the campaign approached him about using it to raise campaign funds.

As for the original photo, I'm torn. While I don't give a crap about the damned AP, it would be swell if the actual photographer had been given recognition and a tidy fee. Just the same, when an artist takes an existing image and configures it into something else entirely, well, that's kind of DaDa.

[SoCalDem]

8. Why not have the Obama's submit a photo of him..I've seen MANY photos of him

and he looks the same.. Fairey's work is a PAINTING of the face of Obama.. we don;t need the AP to take a photo of him, for us to know what the guy looks like..

Michelle needs to send Fairey some family snaps..I'm sure any number of them have that same face in them:)

[blogslut]

15. It's a little late for that now, don't you think?

I know it's been said a bazillion times but that poster is one of the most iconic images of the last 20 years.

A wee bit of trivia: Originally the poster read "Progress".

Fairey created a series of posters supporting Barack Obama's candidacy for President in 2008, including the iconic "HOPE" portrait.<19><20><21> He also created an exclusive design for Rock the Vote. On November 5, 2008, the city of Chicago posted street banners throughout the downtown Loop business district featuring Fairey's Obama "HOPE" portrait. The banners say "Congratulations Chicago's Own Barack Obama, President-Elect of the United States of America".<22> Fairey created two additional images, "Change" and "Vote", for use by the official Obama Campaign, since his original image could not be seen to have any official affiliation with the presidential campaign since it had been "perpetuated illegally"<23> and independently by the graffiti/street artist.

Contrary to the above citation, Fairey has noted in several interviews that he had originally created the iconic poster with "PROGRESS" wording instead of "HOPE", but after a couple weeks of distribution, the Obama campaign contacted Fairey and asked that he change it to "HOPE" since that was more in line with the campaign's message, resulting in the campaign-approved "HOPE" poster.<24> Fairey distributed a staggering 300,000 stickers and 500,000 posters during the election campaign, funding his grassroots electioneering through poster and fine art sales."I just put all that money back into making more stuff, so I didn't keep any of the Obama money," said Fairey in a December 2008 interview.<25> Fairey received a formal letter of thanks from Barack Obama for his contribution to his 2008 presidential campaign...

links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_Fairey#Barack_Obama
http://obeygiant.com/post/obama#more-541

[Luminous Animal]

12. It is not a tracing, it is an interpretation...

which artists have been doing for centuries...

http://www.museupicasso.bcn.cat/meninas/index_en.htm

We are so ignorant of art in the U.S. and so worried about "my property" ooooohhhh "my property" that we'll casually spout ignorance at the drop of a corporate hat.

[Luminous Animal]

14. You can fucking do both, you know.

You can get paid as an illustrator and be a street artist. Do you expect every illustrator to starve while plying their art? What a piece of crap expectation. Warhol illustrated women's shoes for a living. He also stole from Campbell's Soup. WTF was he thinking?

[ogneopasno]

29. I had no idea that was an AP photograph. AP is doing the right thing here.

[Marr]

2. I really think he changed it enough to be original.

Really, it's the color and design on the form that makes it striking-- not the source image.

[ColbertWatcher]

6. True, but the original photographer should be given props.

After all, there was something about that particular image that compelled Fairey to use it.

[Luminous Animal]

11. Oh Jesus Fucking Christ...

http://www.museupicasso.bcn.cat/meninas/index_en.htm

[ColbertWatcher]

18. What's that supposed to mean? n/t

[GReedDiamond]

19. It's about how Picasso...

...and many other artists through time, have used others' imagery in their own works.

In Picasso's case, his use of imagery by Velázquez in a series of works.

I think that's what the point was.

[ColbertWatcher]

20. Excuse me, what I didn't get was ...

... what did you mean by "Oh Jesus Fucking Christ..."?

[Incitatus]

5. How exactly was the image manupulated/used to get the artist's creation?

If he used photoshop, the AP might have a case. If it was something hand drawn from looking at the photograph, then F the AP.

[GReedDiamond]

7. See the AP photo and the artist's interpretation...

That's fair use.

[girl gone mad]

9. I agree.

They don't have a case.

[orleans]

10. screw the ap--there are MANY differences from their photo and the

image on the right. ears, hairline, tie, facial lines from nose to mouth. the ap is being a gigantic asshole.

[Bear down under]

22. You're right, it isn't just a copy.

The most striking difference is the pose and viewpoint. In the photograph, the head is tilted more to the left, and it is seen from below. Fairey has brought it some 20 degrees closer to the vertical and raised the viewpoint.

And he's made the face appear a bit rounder and wider, though that is partly a result of his much more dramatic lighting. While the photograph has evidently been used as reference material, the painting is not a reproduction but a free artistic interpretation and thus can be considered an original work of art.

There is also the point that the photograph is only one of many thousands that have been taken of Mr Obama -- it isn't the classic, iconic image comparable (for instance) to the two or three standard photographs of President Lincoln -- so it's hardly the only evidence the artist had for what his subject looks like or for assessing his character.

[Ani Yun Wiya]

16. Fair use.

Is quite a bit different than unlicensed profit.

I thought this was an original rendering of Obama's visage, not a photoshop creation from someone else's photograph.

The AP does have a case as the original image was shot under the rubric of "works for hire".

[GReedDiamond]

17. The original as rendered by Fairey...

...is not a "Photoshop" image. It is a hand made work of art.

[Ani Yun Wiya]

21. Original art ?

Or was someone else's image simply manipulated in one or another graphic process ?

I'll bet I could take that AP photograph and duplicate that "hand made work of art" in Photoshop or with any of a variety of graphic art processes.

[blogslut]

26. Go for it

The thing is, you don't know what Mr. Fairey's process is. From the images I've seen of him in his studio, it appears he uses good, old fashioned paint and then has the originals made into prints.

I once asked my artist uncle what he thought of an artist that I didn't think was very good. He smiled and asked me:

"What is art?"

Considering he was a man who went to the Chicago Art Institute on a scholarship and has works hanging in universities and banks, I shut the hell up.

[crispini]

25. That looks like fair use to me too.

This should be an interesting case.

[misanthrope]

13. Too bad they didn't go after Bush's WMD lies with the same fervor**nm

**

[deutsey]

23. That would assume they were an actual news organization interested in informing the public

and not part of a corporate conglomerate obsessed only with making more and more profits.

[deutsey]

24. The photographer of the famous Che photo never received any money for his image

He did successfully sue Smirnoff (or the ad agency promoting the vodka) for using the image in an ad, though:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0829-01.htm



The famous picture was shot by Alberto Diaz, a fashion photographer better known as Korda, at a funeral for victims of the explosion of a French freighter transporting weapons to Cuba one year after Fidel Castro's revolution triumphed with the help of Guevara.

Korda's group photograph was not printed by his newspaper the next day. Seven years later, when Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli showed up looking for a cover picture for an edition of Che's "Bolivian Diary," Korda gave him two prints for free.

Guevara was captured six months later in the Bolivian jungle, where his bid to start an armed peasant revolution ended in fiasco. On news on his death, Feltrinelli cropped the photo and published large posters that quickly sold 1 million copies.

The guerrilla fighter was transformed into martyr, pop celebrity and radical chic poster boy.

Korda said he never received a penny from Feltrinelli.

But a year before his death in 2001, the photographer won a lawsuit against London agency Lowe Lintas for unauthorized use of the picture in a Smirnoff vodka advertising campaign. The Smirnoff brand is now owned by Britain's Diageo Plc .

Korda later donated the $70,000 award to children's health care in communist Cuba.

Razi Mireskandari, the London lawyer who filed the copyright case, said Korda worried that the image of Che, who did not drink, was being trivialized by its use in promoting a alcoholic beverage that bore no relation to Cuba or his political message.

[Peace Patriot]

27. I don't call them the Associated Pukes for nothing.

Frigging fascist corporate 'news' monopoly!

[KharmaTrain]

28. Breaking News: Campbell Soups Sue Andy Warhol...

This could be an interesting case...when does copyright end and art begin. And we know what that "amicable solution" is..."give us $1 million and we'll go away". Here's hoping they don't collect a dime...but the photographer who did take the picture gets a residual.

[CraftyGal]

30. An Update on this Issue...

The Obama Hope Poster, Shepard Fairey and photographer Mannie Garcia

Now that the photographer of the image in the Obama poster has been found (here) fair-use debate can begin in earnest.


Photographer Mannie Garcia had this to say over on Tom Gralish’s Philadelphia Inquirer photographer blog:

“Of the iconic poster he said, ‘I’ve been on the campaign for twenty something months, so I would see the artwork, I would photograph it, and think what is with this image? But it didn’t snap. It never occurred to me it was my picture. I thought, ‘that’s familiar.’ I would see it and say that’s cool, but it did keep sticking in my head.’ He was quick to add he is not mad at Fairey, and he’s not looking at any lawsuits. ‘I know artists like to look at things; they see things and they make stuff. It’s a really cool piece of work. I wouldn’t mind getting a signed litho or something from the artist to put up on my wall.’”

Click on the link to read the rest.

CraftyGal