Photographers rally to protect work in ‘fair use’ cases
By Patricia Cohen, New York Times
To many photographers, a federal appeals court ruling last spring that permitted Richard Prince to use someone else’s photographs in his art was akin to slapping a “Steal This” label on their work.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reasoned that as long as Prince’s work transformed the images into original art, he was not violating anyone’s copyright.
But photographers are pushing back against that interpretation. Several membership and trade organizations have banded together recently to press their cause in Congress and the courts.
Yet again we photographers and photojournalists are treated as second class citizens. We are artists. What if I took a photograph of an artists painting and in Photoshop colored everyone’s faces red and put a guitar in one persons hand, framed it and sold it for millions. I bet I’d get sued.