Getty + Photoshop = get rich

Ross Chambers · Sep 2, 2012

This guy has sold prints for AU$ 2,400.

A fool and their money...

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment...st-over-photo-controversy-20120902-258m4.html

rawhead · Sep 2, 2012

I don't know, I'm actually ambivalent about this one. If the "artist" were claiming that he's a photographer and that his works were "photographs" then obviously there's an issue. But if he's claiming he's a "photo artist" *and* if the licensing of the stock image from Getty was one that would allow secondary use with alteration, then I might tend to side with the artist.

For example Andy Warhol took photos of Cambell Soup cans and lined them up and called it art. And many people agree with him. I don't see there being a material difference between that and what this Australian dude did.

Now, of course, if the Getty licensing specifically forbade the kind of secondary use, then there's a violation there.

Nicholas Lindan · Sep 3, 2012

Another odious appropriator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherrie_Levine

So why not join the party ...

Poisson Du Jour · Sep 3, 2012

The gallery did the right thing. Misappropriation of works as "original" or "one's own" is irritatingly commonplace. The National Association for the Visual Arts (in Australia) carried a piece about this last February I think.
Interesting how this debacle involved both analogue (obtaining negatives) and digital (recombo) works.
I do wonder though about the licensing that Getty implies or grants and whether such provisions were effectively breached as part of the reconstruction of the images. Possibly the same licensing it provisions for images signed up via Flickr.

Jenni · Sep 3, 2012

Yeah, I would hate to buy a print thinking it was an original only to learn it was a stock image. The artist needed to better inform the gallery of his methods and his art. I agree with the gallery.

Ross Chambers · Sep 3, 2012

The split photographs on the Herald website as above are the Getty originals/the "artistic appropriation"

I reckon even my cack-handed Photoshop skills could pull these off.

Poisson Du Jour · Sep 3, 2012

How they qualify as "art" at all beats me.

Chris Johnson · Sep 3, 2012

I think Nicholas's term "odious appropriator" fits well, most of us have ethics............. and originality.

blansky · Sep 3, 2012

rawhead said:
For example Andy Warhol took photos of Cambell Soup cans and lined them up and called it art.

But Warhol didn't abscond with someone else's PICTURES of soup cans.

BMbikerider · Sep 3, 2012

Personally speaking I think that it not the 'done' thing. It is a form of fraud which in itself = dishonesty. Yes he may be a dab hand with Photoshop so why not get out there and take pictures of his own and then use photoshop?

Photoshop images are one of the reasons I am drifting further and further away from digital imagery. I don't think it is as honest or as skilful as traditional photography and nor will it ever be. There is a whole world of difference in making a picture sitting at a desk with an image and fiddling about here and there and elsewhere using adobe which is someone else's technology. And then looking at a scene and visualising what you can do with it in the darkroom using the skills you have in your head and hands and to a degree your heart. My ex wife thought that digital imagery was a subject that 'had no soul'. It was one of the things we actually agreed upon.

I also look upon digital images and comparing them with an item of furniture made by a master craftsman and a piece of furniture that is mass produced in some factory somewhere. The latter will never have the feel of quality of the former

Steve Smith · Sep 3, 2012

rawhead said:
For example Andy Warhol took photos of Cambell Soup cans and lined them up and called it art.

He also took photographs from newspapers and printed them in a variety of colours out of register.

Steve.

Sirius Glass · Sep 3, 2012

Getty took the right and just action against the "odious appropriator".

rawhead · Sep 3, 2012

blansky said:
But Warhol didn't abscond with someone else's PICTURES of soup cans.

But in the case of Warhol, the equivalent analogy is, not the photograph of, but the artwork on, the Cambell Soup cans. Would you be ok with what this guy did if he printed out the Getty stock image, took a photograph of that, and then photoshopped it to make his "art"?

rawhead · Sep 3, 2012

Steve Smith said:
He also took photographs from newspapers and printed them in a variety of colours out of register.

Steve.

Exactly. And one can think of similar analogs in many other forms of art as well.

Nicholas Lindan · Sep 3, 2012

... Warhol ...

There is little keeping Warhol from the same opprobrium.

"Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough." Noah Cross/'Chinatown'/R. Towne

blansky · Sep 3, 2012

rawhead said:
But in the case of Warhol, the equivalent analogy is, not the photograph of, but the artwork on, the Cambell Soup cans. Would you be ok with what this guy did if he printed out the Getty stock image, took a photograph of that, and then photoshopped it to make his "art"?

I didn't say I was OK with anything he did or really cared what Warhol did.

Warhol, if I remember correctly, took his own pictures of the soup cans and then did his thing.

This guy took someone else work and then mucked them up.

That is the difference I was pointing out.

As far as Campbell Co suing Warhol, they probably thought about it but decided it was good publicity.

If someone took one of my pictures and messed with them I'd sue them. Actually I'd probably go find where they live and fuck them up.

Steve Smith · Sep 3, 2012

I was thinking of Triple Elvis.

The image of Elvis was taken from a publicity still for the film Flaming Star 1960 (Twentieth Century Fox).

I'm not sure but I don't think he had permission to use the image. I recall reading that he would often use images from magazines.

Steve.

Ross Chambers · Sep 4, 2012

I wrote to the Letters to the Editor at the Sydney Morning Herald (if anyone still reads the print edition :-( )

These are my reflections (as "appropriation" or whatever term you use is a valid artistic procedure IMHO):

<<I hope that Getty Images and the original photographer whose work Ben Ali Ong appropriated are in agreement with Picasso's "stealing" axiom as quoted (or misquoted) by Andrew Frost.

Borrowing is certainly well established in artistic practice; in modern days Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake", Christian Marclay's "The Clock", Luciano Berio quoting Mahler in "Sinfonia", Soda Jerk's video pieces etc. However, and if the Herald's selection of Ong's images depicts them accurately, neither of them shows any evidence of the interpretation, contextualisation, or new vision that would afford the viewer any of the new insights to be found in those and many other works . They really do look like something downloaded, tarted up and merchandised using the easily employed tools of the digital age.>>

Diapositivo · Sep 4, 2012

More information in this thread:

http://www.alamy.com/forums/default.aspx?g=posts&t=13704

Apparently the "artist", Ong, told the gallery owner that he took the images himself and that he had the negatives of the picture.

Getty + Photoshop = get rich

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Getty + Photoshop = get rich

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