Category: Photo Issues

Heroes: Luiz Garrido

Strictly in the interests of research, I spent some minutes this morning on coming out of the shower posing naked, establishing that by crossing my thighs it was indeed possible to tuck my tackle away out of sight, leaving just a triangle of hair visible at the meeting of legs and stomach. Fortunately I was the only photographer present and I certainly wasn’t using a camera.


Brasilia – Congress buildings (C) Peter Marshall, 2007

The show Heróis (Heroes) by Luiz Garrido opened in the Black Hall of the Chamber of Deputies of the Brazilian Government at the centre of Brasilia in November with considerable controversy.

What caused the fuss was an image of the famous Brazilian transsexual actress, Rogéria, in a pose similar to my bathroom experiment (though let’s be clear, I omitted the blonde wig, lipstick, nail varnish, loose shirt, tie, trainers and white socks.)

Rogéria,
(C) Luiz Garrido

Apparently this image was not among those that had been shown when the exhibition was arranged, and the director of Public Relations at the parliament building took exception to it, arguing it was not appropriate to be shown in a space visited by so many children. The same argument was also put forward by my very courteous guide on my visit to the chamber when I asked him about it.


Brasilia – The view from the Black Hall of Congress (C) Peter Marshall, 2007

So for the opening night, the image was on show behind a screen, while negotiations went on about how it might be presented, involving the Festival Organiser and photographer and the management of the chamber. A notice that was put up, announcing (in Portuguese) that “By a decision of the Chamber of Deputies, this cubicle contains a photograph of Rogéria whose open exhibition to the public was not permitted” and this apparently so upset the chamber that they took down the whole show overnight without further discussion.

I find it hard to image how anyone could seriously think that this image would in any way offend against the Brazilian law relating to children and adolescents, which apparently protects them from displays that are inhuman, violent, terrifying, vexing or embarrassing. Young children would walk by unconcerned, while it is hard to see it causing more than a shrug with teenagers exposed to everything the Brazilian media deem fit to publish. This was certainly not – as one bloggers suggests – an erotic image.

You can read more details on the story – and the responses to it by various bloggers – on ‘Global Voices‘ which also has more pictures from the show.

Luiz Garrido‘s show was at ECCO when I was in Brasilia, and looking at the whole show as an outsider, this picture actually struck me as the least interesting of his images on display. The kind of image that gets chosen not because of the photograph but simply because of the discordant views about LGBT rights that it embodies. I’m very much against censorship, but would personally as a curator not have chosen to show this picture.

But there is no doubt that Garrido is an interesting portraitist. I visited his show at ECCO after hours, following a very satisfying rump steak at ‘Oliver’, the contemporary restaurant that is a part of the gallery complex, together with my companions for the evening, Robson and Chris, and I think we were all impressed by his portrait of President Lula, swathed in cigar smoke (and more than a hint of the revolutionary Cubans.)


Lula, (C) Luiz Garrido

Next to him was another fine portrait, of Lucio Costa (1902-98), whose master plan created Brasilia, and next to that, the architect who designed its famous buildings,
Oscar Niemeyer, 100 on Dec 15, and still working. Costa, taken in a study after my own heart, the shelves behind him separated by bricks, slumps to one side, one eye bright and alert, the other side of his face resigned, reflective.


Lucio Costa, (C) Luiz Garrido


Oscar Niemeyer, (C) Luiz Garrido

Niemeyer is placed centrally in the frame, but cropped along the line of his upper lip, taken in front of a white board with some lines and writing, dominated by the two words “mundo injusto” (unjust world.) It is a powerful image, and one that concentrates on the eyes and intellect of the sitter, his balding dome against the world, as well as reflecting the architect’s own use of geometry and curved shapes – as for example in the National Museum at Brasilia.


Brasilia – National Musuem, (C) Peter Marshall, 2007

Greek Automobiles – Foto Arte 2007

United Photojournalists Agency. Automobiles 1944-1964.

Given that I had gone to Brasilia to give a talk that – among other subjects – reflected on the disastrous environmental impact of the car in the twentieth century (and continuing) the show Automobiles at the Gallery Bulcão Athos (part of the National Theatre Claudio Santoro) might not have been the most appropriate for me.


Image from the Foto Arte 2007 web site.

However one of the pictures on-line at the Foto Arte site – and one of the more striking in a show, did show a car “wheels-up”, sitting on its roof like a stranded whale on some beach, with an an out of focus figure in a dark skirt and white socks looking on from the left background, which was perhaps more suitable.

The show was by four Greek photographers, Euripidis Martoglou, Dimitris Triantafillou, Dimitris Floros and Dimitris Foteinopoulos, who from 1944-1964 worked as the “United Photojournalists Agency.” The sixty pictures, from the collection of Nikos E. Tolis, were first shown at the Thessaloniki Chamber of Commerce and Industry in April-May 2007 as a part of the 19th International Photography Meeting organised by the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, the only photography musuem in Greece. You may be more succesful than me in finding out more about this ‘Photobieenale’ (which has until now been an annual event) on its ‘cleverly designed’ web site (perhaps it has problems with Firefox.) There are times when I think that if most photography festival’s web site budget was cut by around 90% we would all be better served. On the web, simpler (and thus cheaper) design is nearly always better.

To see all the pictures from the show that are on the Foto Arte site, I think you also need to look at the artists pages for Dimitris Floros, Dimitris Foteinopoulous and Dimitris Triantafillou, as well as that for Euripidis Martoglou given previously, although most pictures appear on several of the pages. Disappointingly it doesn’t appear possible to identify which photographer took each picture – which come from an earlier, more primitive age of disrespect for the moral rights of photographers who are not attributed as the authors of their work. Of course this is a fight that photographers have yet to win, with newspapers and magazines in the UK seldom bothering to properly identify the source of their images. The show could also have benefited from rather tighter editing.

The show itself was actually a fascinating reflection on what now seems a distant age (and as the theme of the Greek festival in which it was first shown was ‘Time’, fittingly so, though it is harder to see how it fits Foto Arte’s ‘Nature, the Environment and Sustainability,) a real period piece, with the views of cars and the people around them – including a ‘Miss Greece‘ – providing a window onto the the immediate post-war years – liberation, the Marshall plan (which brought US autos), civil war, austerity, wide open streets and more. As well as the cars, the clothing also is very much a time machine.

You can see a few more pictures, although none of them among the more interesting in the show, at the Greek Ministry of Culture.

The show as a whole was a fine demonstration of how time alters how we view images. Many of those on show at the time would have seemed such obvious, ordinary statements as not to deserve the attention of the camera. (I used to tell my students, when showing them Stieglitz’s ‘The Terminal‘ that they should go down and take pictures like him at the local bus garage – but then they closed the garage, knocked it down and built some dreary offices on the site.) Some pictures, though certainly not all, acquire very different meanings over time.

My own view on the car is rather different, and I’ll write more on that – based on a part of the talk I gave in Brasilia – here on this site shortly.

Magnum Magnum

Three posts on the Magnum blog let you take a look at three sample chapters from the incredibly weighty recently published “Magnum Magnum” in which Magnum members write about other Magnum members and half a dozen of their photographs. The book weighs in at 6.5 kilograms, almost a stone for those who still think in old money.

The samples on line are Chien-Chi Chang by Bruce Davidson, Eve Arnold by Elliott Erwitt and, to me the most interesting, Antoine d’Agata by Patrick Zachmann.

Chien-Chi Chang’s work is great, but perhaps I find it a little too pretty – but I also respond that way to some of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work.

I have to admit to a blind spot so far as Eve Arnold is concerned. Of course her work is very professional photojournalism, but it seldom makes me sit up and take notice. Her portrait of Francis Bacon – one of the six – is fine, very recognisable, tightly framed, nice colour, but really pales beside Bill Brandt‘s photo or the artists’s own self-portraits or those head shots by John Deakin and Dmitri Kasterine or… And I wonder what Brian Griffin would have made of him (I was pleased to be at Space in Hackney yesterday on the last day of his show there to hear him talk about his career, and about making many of the portraits.) Don’t get me wrong, I would certainly have been pleased to have taken a picture like hers, but it just seems to lack the spark of the others. The only picture among her six that strikes me as a little special is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which could so easily have been extremely boring.

What I like about d’Agata‘s work is the element of surprise or even shock. Zachman writes about this very well, and I won’t attempt to repeat or better him. Where I don’t think he really does the photographer justice is in his choice of six images, with a couple that are surely not among his best images. Take a look at his Magnum portfolio and you will find it hard to avoid the same conclusion.

You can currently see d’Agata‘s work at the Photographers’ Gallery in London until 27 Jan, 2008. It is worth a visit, although I think the display is rather poor compared to seeing his work on screen. As well as large images from the series Insomnia (2003), the gallery has a montage of several hundred small images from other projects including Vortex (2003) and Stigma (2004), which for me are far too dominated by the way they have been put in frames and fixed to the wall. Many are also virtually impossible to see.

Magnum Magnum seems to me to be a volume making a great case for the death of the book and its replacement by some more convenient viewing method. Or else trying to be both book and trouser-press or exercise equipment. Surely it can’t be long before we can have a lightweight device with a large, paper-quality viewing screen, given that small and slightly primitive versions such as Amazon’s Kindle have appeared.

Cannon Balls to Fenton

I have to admit that when I first read Errol Morris‘s lengthy blog post on which of two Roger Fenton images of the ‘Valley of the Shadow of Death‘ where the Light Brigade charged to its death in 1855, my first thought was “who cares?” Or, as Simon Grant put it last year in his piece for the Tate, “Does it matter?”

In fact I still somewhat feel that way, but there is no doubt that the controversy that his article and the follow-ups to it have aroused are of interest. You can read part 2 and part 3 here – the link on his blog is now incorrect. (though perhaps he will put it right if he reads this.)

Fenton made two pictures of the valley. One with no cannon balls on the road, but plenty on the rougher and apparently lower ground at its edge and the second with quite a few on the smoother road.


Library of Congress: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a06028

Ask yourself as a photographer, going to photograph this scene, whether it is likely that you would decide to clear off the road to make another photograph? Can you imagine Fenton saying, “Marcus my man, just tidy up that roadway there’s a good chap, those cannon balls just look too untidy.” and Sparling saying “Yes Sir, right away” getting down to it? (You might also ask why so many balls should have stopped rolling on the smoother road rather than going down into the gully by its side, especially if you’ve ever played bagatelle.)

Then read many thousands of words and consultations with experts of all kinds by which Morris finally proves (in part 3) – at least to his satisfaction – what I think any successful working photographer would have known all the time.

But I’m being unfair, because a) other people have suggested the opposite, and b) much of the discussion the issue invoked is fascinating. Point a) perhaps just goes to show that many people – even people with big reputations – who write about photography are basically word guys who’ve never really worked with the medium. But read it – along with Morris’s earlier pieces, Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire and Will the Real Hooded Man Please Stand Up for some fascinating argument that often relates to the peculiarly American obsession about not posing or in any way interfering with news photographs. (His latest piece,
Primae Objectiones Et Responsio Auctoris Ad Primas Objectiones (Part One),
is a reply to some of the over a thousand comments made about his previous Fenton pieces, and is also worth reading, although I feel at times far too long-winded and suggesting he has run out of anything fresh to say. Given the number of words he has now expended on the issue, I’m only surprised he hasn’t yet found the 7th Lord Lucan, descendent of the unfortunate 3rd who got Raglan’s order to charge in 1854, carrying it out to the letter despite knowing it was mad. Almost as mysterious is the change of the Lucan Arms, down the road from me towards Laleham, once a decent local, now morphed into the abysmal and anonymous Anglers Retreat.)

I’m a photographer who doesn’t like to pose things, and have spent an awful lot of time cursing (if usually only inwardly) the guys from the big print (what we once called ‘Fleet Street’ – about all that’s left is the Cheshire Cheese) as they get in and interfere with the people I’m photographing. But even though I don’t like to pose people, I’m very aware that I can’t photograph without a point of view.

Property Licences – who needs them?

I’ve written several times over the years about property licences.

Basically saying that in general there seems to be no justification for them, either in this country or in the US, although that doesn’t stop some agencies and libraries asking for them, and certainly some clients won’t use your work without one.

I’m not a lawyer, but in the past I’ve read all the legal advice I could find in books and on-line about the issue, and been unable to find anyone suggesting there was a legal basis for the requirement.

One site that I trust more than most is PhotoAttorney, written by Carolyn E. Wright, of Decatur, Georgia and a real expert in US Law as it applies to photography, and this week she has again repeated her position, which goes a little further than mine – and certainly carrys rather more authority – that it is probably “detrimental for photographers to obtain property releases.”

Her comment applies to all kinds of property, although where I most often come up against it is photographing buildings. Fortunately I don’t work in the USA, where photographers have to do a little research as architectural historians, since – as it says on the US copyright site, “Copyright protection extends to any architectural work created on or after December 1, 1990.”

In the UK, copyright law specifically exempts buildings, and we can probably photograph almost any building from a public place without worrying about copyright – and generally make use of the images without copyright releases.

There is even apparently no problem when photographing sculptures that can be seen ordinarily from a public place in the UK, although you do need to respect the artist’s moral rights – in terms of attribution and not treating the work in a derogatory fashion, at least if the work is included in more than an incidental fashion.

There are also a few well-recorded pitfalls. If you want to photograph the Eiffel Tower, don’t do it at night, because although the structure can be photographed freely, its lighting is apparently copyright (and copyright is also claimed on some other buildings – including the Louvre and its pyramid.)

However even in France it is likely to be OK to publish pictures so long as your picture is a wider view including other buildings, and copyright laws in some other countries do not recognise the French claim. Well-known properties in London which are claimed to be copyright apparently include the London Eye and the Gherkin . You can read lists including these and other claims on some stock photography sites, such as iStockphoto.

Buildings, particularly in the US, can also be trademarked, which can also put their use off-limits for commercial photography without permission – and examples of these are also given in these lists. At this year’s NUJ Photographers Conference barrister Henry Ward, who specialises in copyright, gave the opinion that this “doesn’t hold water” in the UK (but also gave apparently contradictory advice on the copyright of buildings such as the Gherkin, at least according to the London Freelance feature.)

One problem familiar to UK photographers is the London Transport logo. If this is the point of your picture you may have problems (although probably unless you were actually using the image to promote something transport-related there would be little actual legal case) but it would clearly be unreasonable for any objection to be made if it is incidentally included in your picture taken on a London street.

Back to the PhotoAttorney blog, Wright’s recent posting on property releases is of particular interest, because it recounts a case where the need for these is currently being put to test. The College of Charleston Foundation has taken photographer Benjamin Ham to court over a picture he is offering for sale of some of their trees, accusing him of trespass, invasion of privacy and ‘conversion’ – which appears to mean profiting from the use of college property in his picture.

As Wright points out, some of the claims seem odd, and at least one unsupported by any reference to a specific law, but it does seem as if this may be an important test case for photographers – assuming that it is taken to a conclusion.

However a complication in the case is that the College alleges that the photographer “passed through locked gates” (how?) and ignored signs prohibiting trespass in order to take the picture.

It will be interesting to see whether the case is actually determined by a court, and if so what the decision will be – and I look forward to reading Wright’s comments. However the parties may well come to an agreement out of court.

Bilal Hussein and Press Freedom

If you are a photographer and work in Iraq, you run the risk of being imprisoned by the US military. The Committee to Protect Journalists claim that “dozens of journalists – mostly Iraqis – have been detained by US troops over the last three years.”

They get arrested for photographing or filming things that the US army would prefer not to be recorded. Those we know about were mainly working for major foreign agencies such as Reuters and Agence France-Presse, although I wonder if in fact we only know about these people because they were employed by the agencies. Are there many more we don’t know of?

Most get released without charge after a few days or weeks, but the site lists eight cases of more prolonged detention of up to a year. The details of each case ends with the statement: “Charges Substantiated: None”

Of course the best known case is that of Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, who has been held for almost 20 months. I’ve previously written about him here (and elsewhere,) and linked to the campaign to free him, urging others to join in the petition to free him.

His case at last came to the Central Criminal Court of Iraq yesterday, 9 Dec 2007, but the magistrate issued an order that everything should be kept secret, so the AP report can only report the bare facts. Although Hussein and his lawyer were allowed to see some of the material presented to the court, they were not allowed to take copies to use to prepare his defence, and no actual charges were made.

Hussein and his lawyer have also not been allowed to talk privately in order to plan a defence; their meetings have been held with a US soldier and military interpreter present.

It is now up to the Iraqi magistrate to decide whether there is any case to answer – and if so, it will be dealt with by a panel of three judges. It isn’t clear how long this will take, and certainly at the moment there are grave doubts about whether if the case does come to trial Hussein and his lawyers will be given the opportunity to prepare a proper defence so that he can get a fair trial.

Here in the UK of course we do things differently, although perhaps not so differently if you read the time-line of the SOCPA antics by police and courts as published on Indymedia. It is news and I think important news that has hardly been covered by the mainstream press.

One thing that gives photographers (and videographers) covering events such as these on our streets a little – if limited – protection is the UK Press Card. It isn’t perfect, but it does at least sometimes mean that photographers will get treated as reporters rather than as protesters. This Saturday, photographing a picket at Tesco Metro in Lower Regent Street, I would quite likely have been arrested for refusing to go into a pen when told to do so by a police officer if I hadn’t been able to show my card.


Picket against Tesco support for bio-fuels, London, Dec 8, 2007

Strangely enough, most of the times when I’ve really needed a press card have been at small events – like that picket – where the mainstream press aren’t interested and none of the photographers working for them cover.

I photograph them – as do others – because we think it important in terms of freedom of the individual, freedom of expression and a genuinely free press that such things should be recorded and published – even if only non-commercial media – such as Indymedia – are prepared to do so. Most of us also make some money out of such pictures through their use in small publications and as stock. Not a great deal, but with luck enough to make ends meet, at least along with the occasional more lucrative jobs.

Some news photographers are scheming to severely limit the issue of press cards, basically to guys like them working more or less full-time for the big newspapers. It is a change the police would welcome as making their job considerably easier, but which would severely curtail the wider freedom of the press.

Peter Marshall 

Make a fortune from copying

If I were Jim Krantz I’d be talking to a lawyer.

In 2005, of his pictures sold for $1.2 million and he didn’t get a cent. Not even a name check. Trousering the big money is Richard Prince, an acclaimed artist, whose contribution was to copy and enlarge Krantz’s image, taken as a Marlborough ad – and apparently – if the reproductions on Art Knowledge News and the New York Times are reliable (Randy Kennedy’s article appears in both), add a colour cast.

Of course the whole thing is an incredible admission of a total aridity in the art world, and of course the total lack of appreciation of photography – Prince is quoted as once sending an e-mail saying “I never associated advertisements with having an author.” What phenomenal ignorance and arrogance.

Krantz of course is such a successful commercial photographer that he doesn’t need the money, and what he is really concerned about is “attribution and recognition.” But I’d certainly like to see him take Prince to the cleaners.

And I’d like to see all the art critics and increasingly photography critics who for some odd reason feel that Prince’s work is worth writing about to acknowledge that what they are really writing about is work by other people – just blown up large.

I’ve written previously about the importance of moral rights. This is a good example that makes the case.

You can also see Jim Krantz’s ‘art work‘ on line. Not entirely my kind of thing, but more interesting than Prince.

Photo Histories

Some months ago, Graham Harrison contacted me about a new on-line photography site he was setting up, looking at photography in an intelligent way, and invited me to have a look at the preview site. I was impressed, and offered to write something, though as yet I’ve not got around to it. Perhaps later…

Photo Histories is now up for all to read, and the content so far is impressive, with a great interview with Philip Jones Griffiths, who talks about “why the ideals of the thinking photojournalist forged in the 20th century should not be sacrificed for the dumbed down culture of the 21st.” His ‘Vietnam Inc’ (1971) was one of the most important books of the era, and one that moved me and others powerfully when it came out – and is still a fine example of why photojournalism is important. I also have a great deal of sympathy for his views on the current state of Magnum which you can read in the interview. While others – including myself – have written about his work and its significance, this interview does add some insights into the work and the man who produced it – and has a nice picture of him by Harrison.

Another photographer I’ve also written about previously is Homer Sykes, whose self-published books Hunting with Hounds and On the Road Again I reviewed at some length. (You can download a pdf file of the Autumn 2002 issue of the LIP Journal where my review of On the Road Again appeared in print – and both – along with features on photographers Berenice Abbot and Brassai mentioned below – are probably available on the ‘Wayback Machine‘ or its mirror from About Photography.)

In Photo Histories there is another detailed interview with Sykes, as well as a interesting set of pictures ‘Unknown Homer Sykes : The English 1968 – 78‘.

I met Homer again earlier this year, when he was back photographing Swan Upping on the Thames for the first time for many years. You can see some of my pictures from the event at My London Diary, but surprisingly I don’t seem to have mentioned him. The two of us were the only photographers who ran along the river bank to record the Dyers and Vintners men raising their oars to salute the Royal uppers at the end of the day. I hope he got the exposure better than I did in the wickedly contrasting light. I left the D200 to sort it out and it didn’t.

Other features on Photo Histories include some on key books from the history of photography, including Berenice Abbott‘s ‘Changing New York‘ and ‘Paris de Nuit‘ with pictures by Brassai. Perhaps these were a little disappointing in not really dealing with the images, more with biography and background matters, but still useful introductions. Perhaps it might be a useful addition to have features about key images or sets of images from them as well.

Graham Harrison has of course worked for some of the big names in British publishing, and at the centre of Photo Histories is a section called by that same title, which includes an article (originally published on EPUK) about the first Press Photographer’s Year Expo held this summer. At the end is a footnote:

After the success of the Press Photographer’s Year Expo it was sobering to see Stoddart’s stills used with effect throughout the C4 TV documentary The Rise and Fall of Tony Blair credited to Getty Images only.

Moral rights – including that of attribution – are something that photographers still have to fight for. The Photo Histories section also has a very nice insider story by Brian Harris about working with the late Don McPhee during the 1988 US Presidential campaign.

As well as his main site, you can also see more of Graham Harrison’s work in ‘The Oxford Year,’ though in the two years this has been going he seems so far to have missed those swan uppers!

Paris Nudes

I’ve written in the past about the history of nude photography, and Paris was certainly one of the major centres of production of ‘academies‘, those early nude figure studies, ostensibly made for the education of artists, but in fact gratifying a rather wider section of the middle-class male population.

The exhibition ‘Books of Nudes: an anthology‘ at the MEP until 6 Jan, 2008, shows work from the astonishing collection of Alessandro Bertolotti of published nudes gathered over 30 years (and those unable to visit the show may be interested in the catalogue or the book, Books of Nudes, published by Harry Abrams, which is the English version – and rather cheaper.)

It is a splendid collection, and a book that might well go on Christmas lists for photographers – and those with an interest in the subject. But although it is a great source of material – particularly work by lesser-known photographers – I found the organisation and exhibition text less than satisfying.

The work is organised on a chronological basis, and this allows for a reasonably sensible grouping and analysis of work in the early years, but begins to fall apart early in the twentieth century. When it came to the section covering work in the period immediately after 1945, it is clear that it breaks down completely, lumping together work such as Bill Brandt‘s with work that I would dismiss as ‘glamour’ rather than nude. And things can only get worse.

I’ve always refused to write about or feature ‘glamour’ photography. To me it is just a dishonest sibling of pornography. Of course porn covers a very wide range of material, some of which truly disgusts me – and I think it is more than a matter of taste. So-called ‘glamour’ merely saddens me to think that there are some who find it glamorous. It is the artificiality I object to, not any nudity.

We each have our boundaries, and our interests. I’d be quite happy never to see another picture of a ‘celebrity’, with or without clothing. Although there was nothing in the show I’d want to see banned there was certainly some material which I think the show would have been better without.

But there is plenty there of interest, including fine work I’d not seen before, for example by Germaine Krull, as well as much by photographers I’m familiar with and have written about, including Man Ray, (select ‘Nude‘ in the Themes drop-down), Willy Ronis, Jan Saudek, (but not Sara) and many more.

Peter Marshall

Copycat Images?

Copying of images has been making the headlines again in recent weeks. The estate of Bob Carlos Clarke perhaps appears to be claiming rights on any close-up of lips and a tongue, and preparing to take Pepsi to court – you can judge for yourself the validity of their claim on the Amateur Photography web site.

For me, such originality as exists in Carlos Clarke’s image is in the biting down of the teeth on the lips, the particular upthrust of the curled tongue, the slight dynamic tilt and the grainy black and white tonalites, all absent from the Pepsi offering, which – as one might expect from the US giant – is bland, pink and ugly.

It is after all, subject matter we all have to hand (or at least mouth) and probably many of us are wondering if in turn we can sue the estate if Mr Carlos Clarke given that we’ve been photographing people with mouths since the 1960s (or whenever.)

Another case over a similar issue has been decided in the Paris courts, and you can read about it on EPUK (Editorial Photographers UK.) The court ruled that a picture used by the “French National Tourist Office Federation (FNOTSI) was a deliberate copy of a Getty Images stock photograph” by Ian Sanderson.

Here there seems to me little doubt about the visual similarity of the two images – and you can compare them in the EPUK feature, which lists the similarities. As Getty argued in court, you cannot copyright the idea of a couple kissing on a roundabout, but this was an obvious attempt to recreate the image, including the appearance of the models, clothing, pose, background and viewpoint.

Sanderson’s image is widely known, and the only surprising thing about the case appears to me that the agency concerned didn’t just put up their hands, say its a fair cop guv, apologise and then negotiate over the fee. I suspect they may well have tried to do so, but found that Getty were intransigent. The court settlement, including costs, is said to be well below the five times the normal fee that Getty demanded, and given that it took 4 years to reach a settlement one suspects the real costs involved, including all the time of the people concerned, may actually leave Getty out of pocket, though the photographer should be in the money.

FNOTSI have of course lost out – and deserve to on various counts. They had to scrap the campaign and replace it – at an estimated cost of 60,000 euros, as well as paying the fine and damages. And apart from the deliberate breach of copyright involved, they only paid the photographer concerned a miserly 1750 euros for the work, expenses and licencing – when getting the original legally from Getty would have cost around five times as much.

This pair of images is just one of those featured earlier in an earlier feature on Visual Plagiarism on EPUK, now updated, which I’ve written about previously elsewhere.

One vital point to make is that it isn’t sufficient for two images to be visually very similar to cry plagiarism. Your original has to really be original in the first place; there can be plagiarism in copying a cliché. And by my reckoning there are several images featured in the EPUK feature that would be disqualified by that test.

Another problem is that of coincidence. I wouldn’t for a single moment accuse Fay Godwin of either plagiarism or producing clichés, but when I opened one of her books some years ago, I recognised one of my pictures, taken at Chatsworth. One that had actually been hanging on my wall for several years at the time. I made my image in 1984, while hers, in the book ‘Landmarks‘ is dated 1988. (The two pictures are not quite identical, and hers is taken or cropped to a square format.) And although I knew Fay and on various occasions we enjoyed going around exhibitions together and sharing our often similar prejudices, I’m sure neither of us had seen the other’s image when we made our own.

There is a big difference between this case and that of the couple on the roundabout. Neither Fay nor myself arranged anything for the photograph, it was simply a matter of being in the same place within a few inches and using a lens with a similar angle of view (mine was I think a 35mm on an OM body) pointing in more or less the same direction in similar lighting.


I think this was my second picture of the sleepy lion and it was made in May 1984. I’ve put the two pieces of sculpture a little closer together, but the resemblance is fairly striking. (C) Peter Marshall, 1984

Strangely enough, looking through my contact sheets later, I found that I had actually made a very similar photograph on two occasions myself, although I’m fairly sure I didn’t remember the first when I was making the second image. Although I’ve generally got a pretty good memory for images, it is something that has happened to me on a number of occasions.