Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/02/22
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Could I take one of Gee Bee's pictures of the
> Lake Country, stick a sunflower on it, and call it
> 'Kansas as it should be."
Yup, at least as far as I'm concerned. Of course, there's going to be a lot
of personal interpretations of what is 'fair use', as illustrated by the
rules your wife has set for herself, but as someone who has been teaching
art for nearly 25 years the basic guideline is this: in appropriating this
piece of work, have I transcended its origins and made it my own?
Maybe it's helpful to consider the matter of parody and satire as a
comparison. Our constitution gives humorists and social critics a virtual
free pass in issues of this sort.
--- On Sun, 2/22/09, Lawrence Zeitlin <lrzeitlin@optonline.net> wrote:
> From: Lawrence Zeitlin <lrzeitlin@optonline.net>
> Subject: [Leica] Re: Fair use
> To: lug@leica-users.org
> Cc: "Lawrence Zeitlin" <lrzeitlin@optonline.net>
> Date: Sunday, February 22, 2009, 8:53 AM
> This morning the CBS TV show "Sunday Morning"
> featured the work of Shepard Fairy, the street artist whose
> rip off of the AP photo of Barack Obama sparked a lawsuit.
> While not exactly condoning Fairy's actions, the story
> tried to justify the point that artists were free to violate
> the copyright laws if it was done in the name of art.
> Examples used included Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup can
> and Marcel Duchamp's Mona Lisa with a moustache. Apart
> from the inconvenient fact that the Mona Lisa was never
> copyrighted, does the LUG consider this "Fair
> Use." Could I take one of Gee Bee's pictures of the
> Lake Country, stick a sunflower on it, and call it
> 'Kansas as it should be."
>
> How much alteration of an image does the LUG think is
> necessary before a work can be considered original and not
> derivative? Is it the actual image that is important or the
> artist's or photographer's intent? As a point of
> reference, my wife, who is a well respected artist, refuses
> to paint from a photograph which she, herself, has not
> taken. She won't even paint from any of mine. (I hope
> this is a tribute to her sterling character and not a
> critique of my photographs.)
>
> Larry Z
>
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