Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/02/22

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Subject: [Leica] Re: Fair use
From: h_arche at yahoo.com (H. Ball Arche)
Date: Sun Feb 22 10:02:08 2009


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
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more
> information


      

In reply to: Message from lrzeitlin at optonline.net (Lawrence Zeitlin) ([Leica] Re: Fair use)