The proliferation of imagery around us only grows more and more astonishing each day, and we’re not just talking about in urban technological junkyards like Times Square and Piccadilly Circus. With all the recent technological advancements in imaging and digital photography, the camera has truly become embedded in the fabric of our daily lives. Inexpensive digital cameras fill the jacket pockets of tourists, the lids of laptop computers, the tailgate of new luxury automobiles (to see the rear view on a dashboard monitor sans neck strain, of course!), the lobbies, elevators, and boardrooms in corporate high-rise buildings, in mobile telephones, taxi cabs, nd virtually any other space you can think of.
The rise of our “drag and drop” info-hungry culture, seems to have developed a collective societal ethos that because I can (technically speaking) cut and paste an image from google image search or download an mp3 from limewire, and ultimately, must mean that my actions are ethical and legal— why else in the world would such tasks be so easy and accessible?
These behaviors have truly become a sign of our times— a time where authorship and ownership are (mis)used interchangeably and extend far beyond the traditional confines of time, space, and medium.
Appropriation, as an artistic voice and critique has existed since the beginning of art as a discipline, but now lends itself to very new and very real applications with the use of inexpensive technologies that are quite simple for the average computer or camera user but yield extraordinarily complex and technically polished results.
Sadly— gone are the days of Polaroid cameras and one-hour film processing photo shops. We’ve entered a new realm of digital photo kiosks and online printing services like Kodak EasyShare Gallery (previously Ofoto.com) and yahoo!’s flickr online photo sharing and printing service, unless of course you have the luxury of a high-quality personal photo printer, which can be had for as little as $99.
The arena of photo retouching was once confined to only those at the top of their craft— and those with extremely costly and complicated graphics systems at their disposal. While there is still an inner circle of retouchers, who are the center of editorial, publication, and commercial work, simple computer software allows for my 84 year old grandmother and my 13 year old sister alike to create professionally bound scrapbooks, remove devilish red eyes from family snapshots, take years off the faces and bodies of relatives (bladelessly, of course), and make our cousin with teenage acne look like she belongs on the cover of CosmoGIRL!
Pascal Dangin, a noted professional retoucher to the stars, working for major fashion ateliers and magazines across the globe theorizes, “Basically we're selling a product — we're selling an image. To those who say too much retouching, I say you are bogus. This is the world that we're living in. Everything is glorified. I say live in your time.” On the other hand, professional fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier says, “Before I met Pascal, I couldn't do so many different kinds of lighting. He has introduced a new brand of photography that didn't exist before. Without Pascal, a lot of photographers would not exist today.”
While a clear distinction exists between the retouching produced by a professional and the primitive (although sometimes flawless) photo retouching and appropriation of artwork by my grandmother and sister, the access to technology is not only democratizing the creation of images, but it’s putting the same tools at the disposal of a very broad audience. The internet adds another complexity to the issue of access, as it allows for people around the world to not only quickly disseminate images, but also share them with each other, search the user created collections, and most importantly— in a legal manner allow creative license to others through services like flickr, which encourages users to agree to the creative commons licensing scheme.
Today, it’s not uncommon for artists, designers, and everyday computer users to grant themselves the right to use the work of others, and often walk a fine line of how much and what can be reasonably used (although some argue that nothing should be used without explicit permission from the creator!). Search engines have done an amazing job in indexing our digital world, supporting many beneficial societal milestones, but they have also challenged the livelihood of artists, photographers, and image-makers. Laws haven’t been updated to handle our digital world, and the discussions have just barely scratched the surface of the many issues raised by digital photography.
At the onset of digital photo technologies, professionals and scholars argued in the realm of determining a percentage of a work that could be appropriated and used without being “in bad taste”, but such arbitrary rules make not only enforcing difficult, but they don’t adequately address the concerns of authorship and artistic/moral rights.
With the rampant use of appropriated imagery, it’s nearly impossible to keep track of the use of individual images (pieces or in its entirety). It’s important for working professionals to exercise good judgment and operate within ethical guidelines, respecting the work of other artists and legal obligations.
While these situations are typically not clear-cut, just as the (in)stability of the image in our digital age has led us to continue to seriously question the believability and truth of an image. United States copyright law extends fair use for the purpose of creating a transformative work, a parody or critique, but even under this clause, it can be a difficult argument to persuade a court of law and a judge to rule in your favor because there are other factors that are weighed to determine your liability and potential damage to the artist and market for the original work.
Individuals can generally be more lenient in how they decide to use some work, but for-profit/professional organizations and publications are held more accountable and hold a greater liability for using the work of others, particularly when it is protected under copyright law. Simply playing the role of ignorance, or not fully understanding the law, will not hold up in a court of law— it is essential that professionals have a working understanding and knowledge of the copyright system so that they themselves or their employer are not held liable for damages.
Conversely, there is a camp of pioneers who believe that information should be free (or at least free-er), with the most vocal proponent of easing copyright law being Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University. Lessig argues in his book Free Culture that current copyright law stifles creativity and holds much information hostage under orphan copyrights that are nearly impossible to track down and gain rights or usage for.
Whichever side of the creative fence you may end up on, it’s important to know the legal facts, but it also equally as important to respect the work of other artists and their creations. When you’re clearing selling a product or service, versus personal use (that few people will see, not harming the marketplace), or creating an artistic critique or work based on appropriation theory, these are two very separate intentions, and thus subject to different ethical and legal standards.