Copyright, the law and appropriation of art and photography.

 Copyright is vital for anybody in the creative sector. It means that those who create, don't have their intellectual property stolen or reused without permission. A good source of information is Copyright notice: digital images, photographs and the internet - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

A user of imagery will require permission from the person who took the image to use them. There are exceptions to this such as if you work for a company and the images where shot in their time. This especially applies to myself. Images I may take at college, can be used up to 3 years after I leave. This would be used for such things as promotion of the arts department. 

Direct Gov states...

"The person who creates an image (“the creator”) will generally be the first owner of the copyright. However, there are various situations in which this is not necessarily the case. For photos, it may depend on when the photo was taken, as different rules may apply if the photograph was taken before 1989. Creators also have what are known as moral rights (see example below on stopping the use of an image if you disapprove).

If an image was created as part of the creator’s employment, rather than by a freelance creator, the employer will generally own the copyright. It is also possible that, in instances where a person has arranged equipment and made artistic decisions prior to taking a photo, but wasn’t the one to press the trigger, the person making the arrangements could own the copyright. An example of this could be where a photographer has made the creative choices in setting up a shot, but got an assistant to actually press the trigger.

The creator of an image may choose to allow a person or organization to license the work on their behalf, license the copyright directly themselves, or “assign” (transfer) the copyright to another person. The term ‘licensing’ means giving another person or organization permission to use a work such as an image, often in return for payment and/or on certain conditions for a specific period of time. A Copyright Notice on assigning copyright is available"

Sometimes permission is not required...

Is permission always required to copy or use an image?

Sometimes permission is not required from the copyright holder to copy an image, such as if the copyright has expired. Permission is also not required if the image is used for specific acts permitted by law (“permitted acts”, or sometimes referred to as “exceptions to copyright”). People can use copyright works without permission from the copyright owner, such as for private study or non-commercial research, although some exceptions are not available for photographs.

If permission is required to use an image, permission will need to be obtained from all the copyright owners, whether it is a single image with numerous creators, a licensed image, or an image with embedded copyright works. Sometimes there will be one person or organization that can authorize permission for all the rights in that image; in other cases separate permission may be needed from several individual rights owners.

The creator of a copyright work such as an image will usually have right to be acknowledged when their work has been used, provided they have asserted this right. If you are unsure whether or not the creator has asserted this right, then it is recommended that you provide a sufficient acknowledgement when using their work.

Often, copyright images have a name, a C and a year. However, this is not always the case. Ownership is seen in the metadata seen within the image. It is important you always get permission. 

AOP how to join (the-aop.org)

I recently created images which used appropriation as a theme. This involved using images such as painting such as The Mona Lisa and recontextualization of their meaning by adding elements to the image to give them a contemporary meaning. This is not illegal (in some cases) as the creators original meaning is still evident on the image. However, the recontextualizing of the image has given the image a second meaning also. However, this usually applies to older photographs or works of art where there is no copyright. More modern images and works of art are open to recent copyright laws. 

My 3 examples of appropriation Mona Liza ,American Gothic and Turner with elements added by myself. This is recontextualizing the image. 

According to Appropriation | Tate

"Appropriation art raises questions of originality, authenticity and authorship, and belongs to the long modernist tradition of art that questions the nature or definition of art itself. Appropriation artists were influenced by the 1934 essay by the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, and received contemporary support from the American critic Rosalind Krauss in her 1985 book The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths"

Appropriation art has been no stranger to controversy by those claiming copyright. According to The tension between copyright law and Appropriation art: where is the line between artistic innovation and stealing? (theartnewspaper.com)

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 On 9 December 2021, the Andy Warhol Foundation filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the United States Supreme Court, asking the nation’s highest court to take up an appeal challenging the Second Circuit’s decision that a series of portraits by Warhol of the musician Prince were not transformative and did not make fair use of Lynn Goldsmith’s relevant photograph. Goldsmith’s response to the Foundation’s petition is due in January 2022. It will take a few months before we know whether the Supreme Court grants or denies the petition. It should be noted that Cariou filed a petition for a writ of certiorari before the US Supreme Court in the Cariou v. Prince et al. litigation, which the Supreme Court denied. It will be interesting to see what the Supreme Court decides with regards to the Foundation’s petition. We will be closely following the developments"