What doesn’t get talked about during the periodic uproars over a painter’s appropriation of a photographer’s work are the numerous situations in which the shoe’s on the other foot. So photographers’ commonplace practice of basing photographs on works of graphic art, often in detail and faithful to the originals, is celebrated, not condemned, by the very same community that objects, vociferously, when painters and other graphic artists imitate or derive iconography from photographic images. What inexplicable double standard operates here? […]
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If it’s acceptable (or not) for painters to work from photographs, and to replicate closely or paraphrase broadly the iconography of photos, do photographers get to do (or not do) the same with paintings? And, if they do, why do all the complaints about image appropriation seem to come from the photography side of the spectrum? […] The compulsory worldwide education for which Malala Yousafzai called in her U.N. speech, though it will surely involve physical books and paper and pens, will rely increasingly on digital tools: computers, the internet, digitized books and periodicals accessed through digital libraries. And I’m convinced that the future of the illustrated book lies in the ebook or some other form of electronic delivery. […] |
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The Photographer and the Painting (3)
By imitating paintings as freely and frequently as they do, and by tolerating and even endorsing such activity by their fellow practitioners, photographers undercut themselves and their colleagues who object to such infringements on the part of visual artists, abandoning any claim to the moral high ground. […]