Re: Copyrights

Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Sun, 18 Feb 1996 16:06:11 -0500 (EST)

On Sun, 18 Feb 1996, Peter Marshall wrote:
> Often a large part of the income a photographer derives from an image is
> precisely in reproduction fees.

Of course I didn't mean you should take someone's photograph and
*reproduce* it without payment/permission -- though Peter, when, let's
say, Artforum desires to do a feature about you and your work, I daresay
you'll let them reproduce photographs without paying a fee.

As far as I know, the art magazines never pay for the images they
reproduce, although in some cases photo magazines do -- or used to. When,
so long ago I hardly can remember it, I had work reproduced in *articles*
in photo magazines they sent me a check -- to my great astonishment. But
in "reviews," same magazines, no check.(Sam, care to reveal whether you
got check from Photo Techniques?)

A related issue, perhaps, is reproduction/publication of original
photographs, ie., photographs you yourself have taken, without permission.
As I understood the law in the States (before recent revision, anyway), I
could take a photo of a *person* in a public place and reproduce it as
art, news or for educational purposes, without permission, model release, or
payment (although if it showed them in a bad light, the ice got thin). I
couldn't, however, silkscreen same image onto greeting card or T-shirt and
sell without release/permission/payment.

A while back I spent several years photographing in Times Square, playing
little old lady tourist, but occasionally someone -- a man, always a
man -- would stop and tell me I couldn't take people's photographs without
their permission. I would smile and say: a. I don't speak English, b.
there's no film in the camera, or c. I'm a lawyer.

But this is an interesting area, which I believe has also been clarified
in recent court cases, perhaps better covered on a photo/law list, which I
assume exists. (I mean if a sourdough bread group, how could there not be
photo law?) But you see where bringing up issues of "reproduction" can
lead!

> important that art schools etc buy the books in the first place because if
> the lecturers go elsewhere and copy images then the students and the authors
> and photographers (and artists who get paid for reproductions) are all
> getting short-changed.

If you can tell me how I can photograph photographs out of books I don't
own -- well I guess I could take my camera to the bookstore!!!

> I'm pleased - as a photographer - to hear that Koons lost the case. He
> should have (and could have afforded) paid a reasonable fee to use (abuse?)
> the work.

Actually, the final disposition of the Koons case was replete with irony
and, irony being the ultimate post-modern art form, even in photography,
might be of interest to those who didn't follow the case breathlessly as it
unfolded:

Koons was, of course, enjoined from producing more of the objects. But he
also had to give one of the existing ones to the photographer! Since the
value of such a Koons work at the time was, I would guess, in the thirty
to fifty thousand-dollar range, or the equivalent of the sale of maybe
twenty thousand greeting cards at two dollars each, at the end of the day
the photographer made a tidy profit (presumably Koons also paid court/legal
fees) -- not to mention all the publicity!

Cheers,

Judy