Is It Okay To Shoot Someone Else's Art?

[ic-racer]

I frequently take pictures of stuff that shows up on my computer. I call it 'computer art.' I put a little border around it and call it my own.

 

[MurrayMinchin]

Call it what you want, but without the paintings it is just a photo of people's backs. The art is what makes it interesting and relevant. I will also remind you of the photo in the original post. This is not about just copying art, but incorporating it into a photo.

That's why I said, "...a great example of a photograph of people interacting with art, not a photograph of art..."

How about a piece of 3 dimensional art interacting with its immediate environment with no live humans involved?

I'd say this one's okay because it places the pole where it lives, and when it falls, where it will be absorbed back into the Earth. I had to wait for the conditions, and had to force myself into the middle of a thick huckleberry patch to get the vantage point.

 

[paul6001]

Some reactions to what I believe is a nicely high-minded discussion, one that I'm glad has mostly avoided the "Is it art?" question. More thought and ink has been wasted on that subject than the entire run of The National Enquirer. As I said up front, I'm not just trying to make art in the sense that it will pass the Duchamp test. I'm trying to make something serious and good and lasting.

I found that there was strangely little reference to the picture I posted. I'm not fishing for compliments but I would like to know if people thought that picture of mine to be an honest effort or just a copy of something by Richter.

A few specific observations:

koraks: "I don't make art - I snap pictures." Not me. I'm trying to play in the biggest game possible. I want it all.

Dustin: "I wouldn't take a photo of a woman that close up without asking permission." If the world followed that principle, we'd lose street photography almost in its entirety. I wouldn't be happy about that.

Frankly, I couldn't care less what the law says about my efforts and anyone who sued me would have an awful hard time collecting on any judgment he or she might win.

Don_ih and the puddle jumper: "[I[f you try to exclude everything you didn't make and isn't "intellectually" yours from your photos, you won't be taking many photos." My point exactly, just made in a way that is more clear and concise than anything I wrote. Guess I can add Cartier-Bresson to Richter and Struth as my new buddies.

Dustin (again): "You should respect other people's reasonable wishes." This time we are in agreement. If Richter didn't like my efforts and I became aware of his dislike, I should take my picture down. Maybe I'll ask the next he and Henri and Thomas and I go out for drinks, I'll ask.

Saganich: "How would you feel if you saw a painting made from a photograph you took in a gallery for $5K?" That's exactly what Richter did in his Baader-Meinhof paintings. The result is worth something like $50 million and is, I would argue, among the handful of great post-war works of art.

MurrayMinchin: "I'd call that a great example of a photograph of people interacting with art, not a photograph of art...big difference." Me or Struth?

 

[MurrayMinchin]

I was commenting on the Struth photo, as it was the one in the post quoted.

I didn't comment on yours because the first sentence in this thread was...

Is it possible to make art by shooting someone else's art?

...so that's where my head went.

 

[MurrayMinchin]

Oh...just noticed this is the first time you've posted here in ten years...welcome to the (mostly) friendly fray!

 

[DREW WILEY]

Misrach did a whole book called Pictures of Paintings (on museum walls) - basically recompositions by shooting just parts of select paintings. I found it rather pretentious and monotonous in an academic art manner, but not necessarily plagiaristic.

 

[Jim Peterson]

Photographing murals is an example of copying another's work for art. I thought maybe if I was able to extract portions of a mural in good light that it would be considered original art but in the end it wasn't convincing for me.

 

[Pieter12]

I was commenting on the Struth photo, as it was the one in the post quoted.

I didn't comment on yours because the first sentence in this thread was...

...so that's where my head went.

I don’t believe a Struth photo was ever posted in this thread.

 

[awty]

I like this version I found on Flickr.
The problem with photographing at commonly photographed places is that there will be plenty of similar pictures. If you are going to, then you need to think outside the box and do something more out of the ordinary.

 

[paul6001]

There's nothing new under the sun. Shakespeare was pretty much the last person to do something original and he had to reinvent the English language in order to do so. The fact that you were able to find something similar among the millions of pictures on Flickr that do nothing but take up server space is meanlingless to me. There's probably a few more an Instagram. What of it? Which of your pictures (and I mean "your" in the universal sense) was taken in a unique location where no one has ever taken a picture or written a poem or drawn a sketch?

 

[paul6001]

Oh...just noticed this is the first time you've posted here in ten years...welcome to the (mostly) friendly fray!

Thanks for having me back!

 

[MurrayMinchin]

I don’t believe a Struth photo was ever posted in this thread.

My bad for misreading post #22 https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/is-it-okay-to-shoot-someone-elses-art.205012/#post-2771424

It has something to say, and quite apropos to this forum...you just have to compare the view counts of clothed women vs naked women in the gallery section.

 

[awty]

There's nothing new under the sun. Shakespeare was pretty much the last person to do something original and he had to reinvent the English language in order to do so. The fact that you were able to find something similar among the millions of pictures on Flickr that do nothing but take up server space is meanlingless to me. There's probably a few more an Instagram. What of it? Which of your pictures (and I mean "your" in the universal sense) was taken in a unique location where no one has ever taken a picture or written a poem or drawn a sketch?

I don't think anything I do is unique or special, just puzzles me why you think yours is.

 

[paul6001]

I don't think anything I do is unique or special, just puzzles me why you think yours is.

Why? Maybe I'm more confident. Maybe I'm a better photographer. Somebody sitting and contemplating? Yeah, seen that before. I'm going to defend my work here. Lots of elements at play. I can't remember seeing anything else like it.

Why do you feel it necessary to criticize me? Some artists are better than others. Richard Serra and Cindy Sherman deal in the unique everyday. Is it so outrageous to think that I might stumble into in every now and then?

 

[paul6001]

I don’t believe a Struth photo was ever posted in this thread.

I was commenting on the Struth photo, as it was the one in the post quoted.

I didn't comment on yours because the first sentence in this thread was...

...so that's where my head went.

I was mostly just kidding.

 

[MurrayMinchin]

...Which of your pictures (and I mean "your" in the universal sense) was taken in a unique location where no one has ever taken a picture or written a poem or drawn a sketch?

Almost all my photos are taken while bushwhacking (wandering around off trail) in one of the lowest population density areas on the north coast of BC, Canada, or by boating to remote anchorages where few boaters bother going ashore.

 

[MattKing]

Why? Maybe I'm more confident. Maybe I'm a better photographer. Somebody sitting and contemplating? Yeah, seen that before. I'm going to defend my work here. Lots of elements at play. I can't remember seeing anything else like it.

Why do you feel it necessary to criticize me? Some artists are better than others. Richard Serra and Cindy Sherman deal in the unique everyday. Is it so outrageous to think that I might stumble into in every now and then?

I took the referenced comment to be more about the importance - or lack of importance - of uniqueness, when compared to the importance of quality, expressiveness, vision, humour and narrative in photography.
Many of us are devotees of the idea of photography being as much about the performance as it is about the musical score - to lean a bit on an analogy.

 

[awty]

Why? Maybe I'm more confident. Maybe I'm a better photographer. Somebody sitting and contemplating? Yeah, seen that before. I'm going to defend my work here. Lots of elements at play. I can't remember seeing anything else like it.

Why do you feel it necessary to criticize me? Some artists are better than others. Richard Serra and Cindy Sherman deal in the unique everyday. Is it so outrageous to think that I might stumble into in every now and then?

Good for you. You should be happy in your own skin.

 

[awty]

I think modern art makes for a great backdrop when doing portraiture. I took this photo at the local gallery of modern art. Not sure what the painting was about, probably something heavy, not sure if I would need to give credit.

 

[petrk]

@awty: Lovely image!

 

[koraks]

koraks: "I don't make art - I snap pictures." Not me. I'm trying to play in the biggest game possible. I want it all.

Good luck with that. I stick with what my friend said about much of photography being firmly stuck back in the first half of the 20th century. There's interesting stuff going on, for sure, but to be blunt about it, I've never seen any of it on this forum. Well, not much. And it never came in the shape of a bare-backed woman in a museum. Conversely, if I go to museums or galleries, it's not that type of photography that's on display, at least not if contemporary work is being shown.

But maybe @Don_ih has helped us out already, and all of us are making art, really. Just not necessarily art that has relevance outside of our own individual experience. Which in my mind is perfectly fine, too.

 

[Daniela]

I took the referenced comment to be more about the importance - or lack of importance - of uniqueness, when compared to the importance of quality, expressiveness, vision, humour and narrative in photography.
Many of us are devotees of the idea of photography being as much about the performance as it is about the musical score - to lean a bit on an analogy.

This is beautifully put, Matt. I was thinking along these lines when I read the original post.
Is it ok to shoot someone else's art? You, OP, bring up two points: that of how doing so can inspire art making in itself; and that of other people's perception/judgment of it and how your work might fit or not in a bigger context. I'll leave the second point to those who're interested/knowledgeable in the topic.
As for the including others' work in your own, it seems to be something that has given you results that give you satisfaction, and has inspired new ideas. In that case, it is not only ok, it is truly worthy of continued exploration. I have found that ideas followed by action tend to yield much more interesting results than thinking and wondering (and taking other people's potential opinions into account). And those results are not only more meaningful *to you*, they take you in new directions, become new sources of inspiration, and lead you down your very own and unique path. Who wouldn't want to take that trip?!
What happens afterwards in the outside world is something else entirely and depends on many external factors. If you focus your attention on what you do, you'll find inner satisfaction and meaning for sure. So worth it!

 

[Hassasin]

The thread is young and already in "logical" chaos. As @koraks stated, art itself is difficult to define, and I would say more ... impossible to define and can span just about every walk of life, including utensils everyone uses every single day. If the answer to this question were to be a hard NO, there would have been next to nothing left that could be legally photographed. Is a photo within which there is a painting/sculpture of whomever infringing on individual rights? Hell no. How about countless still life images that incorporate forks/plates/mugs etc that are the center point of the image?

One poster just said it: you shoot someone's back and and you need to ask for permission? How and when exactly has this become an issue? There are countless females wearing same dress who would look exactly same. Tattoo is the issue? She went public with it, put on display, deal with it as appropriate.

But the world has gone nuts some time ago, almost anything done can be defined as infringement, all depends whom you ask and how much money can be made from it. Even what was once a fairly clean cut "fair use" doctrine is being challenged regularly, in spite of clear no ill intentions and small volume/audience with no profit involved.

Talk to Apple and how they have infringed on others, while saying same thing over some really silly "wrongs", they have their own long history how a wrong can be made even wronger, even though nobody noticed until the Apple news came out. And I'm saying this as I went full swing from Windows/Android to iThings.

 

[awty]

@awty: Lovely image!

Thanks. I would love to use Rothko's paintings for a backdrop.

 

[paul6001]

Good luck with that. I stick with what my friend said about much of photography being firmly stuck back in the first half of the 20th century. There's interesting stuff going on, for sure, but to be blunt about it, I've never seen any of it on this forum. Well, not much. And it never came in the shape of a bare-backed woman in a museum. Conversely, if I go to museums or galleries, it's not that type of photography that's on display, at least not if contemporary work is being shown.

But maybe @Don_ih has helped us out already, and all of us are making art, really. Just not necessarily art that has relevance outside of our own individual experience. Which in my mind is perfectly fine, too.

Well, as someone pointed out, I haven’t posted on this forum in ten years.

The picture I posted is probably about 10 years old and very much out of style when compared to what’s in the galleries these days. The way the door has been slammed shut on street photography is a mistake, I believe. If Cartier-Bresson were to show up at MoMA tomorrow, I don’t think they’d give him the time of day. I don’t think that photography is different than any other art form in that sense but we’d all be a lot better off if there was more stylistic flexibility in the world. Who’s to say that, somewhere, there isn’t an impressionist painter making some interesting work.

Koraks, I feel bad for you. 90 percent of everything is always junk but there’s lots of interesting work being made and I wish you could appreciate it. I’m not going to make a list that I feel is just going to get shot down but there’s so much and it’s so varied that I can’t believe that there isn’t something you could fall in love with.

Well, forget what I said and load your weapons, everyone. Sally Mann is a little past her prime but just knowing she’s around with a camera in her hands inspires me. Some of the Düsseldorf photographers are doing important work. Lorca di Corcia, Jeff Wall, Todd Hido, Shelby Lee Adams . . . Morrissey once sang, ‘It’s so easy to laugh, it’s so easy to hate/It’s hard to be gentle and kind.” Give people a chance, koraks. If you could set aside that fierce judgment, just for a moment, you would be the big winner.