VoxPhotographs Weblog

(From E-Photo Newsletter #145 - if you are not subscribing to this great newsletter, the link to do so is at the bottom of this excerpt.)

EDITORIAL: ORPHAN WORK AND COPYRIGHT LAWS

By Alex Novak, Contemporary Works/Vintage Works, Ltd.

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The patchwork quilt of ill-thought-out copyright laws has made it a nightmare and a virtual impossibility to create any kind of inclusive new history of photography or art without the threat of a massive lawsuit, which has occasionally been used in a fashion akin to blackmail.

While I have great sympathy for artists’ concerns over loss of copyright, I do not see how those concerns could not be met under the new proposals before the U.S. Congress. To leave copyright law as is would not address the serious concerns of publishers, institutions, curators, author/editors and scholars. It would do a disservice to continuing research and scholarship.

Contrary to Frank Stella’s editorial on the subject in the Art Newspaper and other comments on the web, any major living artist, including Stella, would still have to approve any such work. To not do so would be a clear violation of the law. Any publisher/author that did recognize the need to contact a name that one could simply “Google” online and didn’t follow through would be punished severely under the proposed law. What the law would do would be to prevent some third-cousin who now is the “repository” of a more obscure artist’s estate from suing publishers and author/editors who used an image after trying repeatedly to find out who owned copyright and failing.

As the publisher of an email newsletter and a major website on photography collecting, I received dozens of emails each month from editors, curators and publishers asking who controls the copyright of an artist. I think one rather simple solution is a basic database that is run by the U.S. Copyright Office that lists artists by name, media and who is the current holder of their copyrights and how to contact these copyright holders. This would not require massive amounts of funding and could even recoup the little funding necessary by minor charges for access to such a database, which could then be used as a defense in any copyright cases. The rather light burden of listing with such a national (or even international) database should fall on the copyright holder, as it used to. If the work is not identified any where by artist, then it should rightly fall into the public domain. But the new law doesn’t even say that. It merely says that the artist would be entitled “only” to their normal charges for its use, if due-diligence was used by the publisher. In other words, the publisher isn’t off the hook, just that they could not be held up for blackmail.

Let’s work together to deal with ALL the real issues here on both sides. Copyright law is not some windfall way for artists to win the lottery by suing publishers when those publishers have made an honest attempt at finding the copyright holder and failed. At the same time, I think the law should be clear as to what specific actions a publisher should take to ascertain who the copyright holder is in order to receive its protection. Publishers should not be allowed to simply ignore copyright.

There are easy solutions to these problems if the participants are truly trying to resolve them.

Copyright © 2008 I Photo Central, LLC.
I Photo Central and Vintage Works Ltd., Alex Novak, 258 Inverness Circle,
Chalfont, PA 18914 USA; Phone (Country code: 001) 215-822-5662; email:
info@iphotocentral.com .

To subscribe to the E-Photo Newsletter visit:
http://www.iphotocentral.com/subscribe/subscribe.php .

Thanks to a short article in the current issue of PHOTOGRAPH magazine, I’ve bookmarked three blogs I want to keep in touch with…in fact, I’d be much further along personally and professionally if I logged on to these each morning during breakfast instead of reading the regional newspaper (my husband needs to subscribe for the comics and crossword/puzzles) which is shrinking daily and covering all the news I read the day before online.

So don’t let these pass you by.

pictureyear.blogspot.com - Dealer James Danziger must be up all night writing his blog. He owns Danziger Projects in New York City (and is former director of Magnum Photos/NYC). In June alone, he wrote about Misrach, photos of RFK’s funeral train taken in June, 1968, large format landscape photographers, YouTube images to link to, Iranian beauty contests,Tim Walker’s London Show, surreptitious photographs of his own - and on and on. Tons of images to soak up - really worth the time of all of us busy people. Lots of reader comments to enjoy as well.

howtobuyart.blogspot.com - most of what I saw here is about photographs, so log on and go to it. I really like the tone of the blog and the chance to see some other things I don’t have time to dig for myself. Lisa Hunter, the writer, is an arts journalist now based in Montréal, but recently in NYC, so she has lots of experience with that “art scene of art scenes”.

5b4.blogspot.com - if you suffer from the same illness I do — can’tresistphotographbooks-itis — you will find this blog provides some very effective medicine! Not just the usual easy-to-find photography book titles are reviewed and discussed here, so if you want to get out beyond your Amazon wishlist, bookmark this blog. A really good part of this blog is the reader comments - some real in-depth info. from other people who share this uncurable condition!

Fine art photographers, emerging or established, will find it worth their while to spend some time on the following two sites, the first one sponsored by the second one:

Women in Photography showcases work from all women fine art photographers and every other Tuesday publishes a one-person show. This site is an easy way to keep in tune with what is happening out there and that is helpful considering we are in the corner of things here in Maine and the juice of contemporary photography’s national scene sometimes stops flowing before it gets this far (like New York City ????!).

This site was just launched a week ago and Jim Nickelson brought it to my attention. As the blurb says on its home page- this will develop into an excellent resource for curators, editors and gallery directors, to name a few. Although the site invites you to subscribe to Women in Photography, I couldn’t figure out how to. If you do, let me know.

Women in Photography is “sponsored” by humble arts foundation - another pretty interesting site. Print sales, group and solo shows both online and in bricks-and-mortar galleries, books and a grant application for emerging artists who have no gallery representation. Its events and exhibitions calendar stops in March, 2008, but see the comment below from Jon Feinstein at haf for more specifics - this is an active, dedicated organization.

But, check ‘em out. You can’t lose. It’s important to really spend time at fine art photography exhibits in galleries and webgalleries to find out what’s being done in your field and here are two good places to spend time today.

Long-form journalism, and photojournalism in particular, is something that has been greatly impacted by media changes over the past decade.  Increasing print costs and decreasing readers have resulted in fewer in-depth stories in many print magazines and newspapers.  The Internet offers hope for a renaissance in viewing this sort of content, but the potential of the Internet for this has not yet realized, as most photo essays combine messy interfaces with tiny images.  Two recent developments, very different from each other, both offer possible new directions for journalism and photojournalism to go.

Newly created Dispatches magazine (yes, a real print magazine) looks very exciting.  I expect its production values to be top-notch (I don’t yet have a copy, but it is premium priced), and it promises to allow for longer, in-depth articles and photo essays.  The first issue is about America and the second Iraq.  What is so exciting is the depth - the main photo essay in Volume 1 runs about 80 pages!  Length without quality wouldn’t be enough, but from what I’ve seen so far, it looks top-notch.  It is worth digging around their new website as there is quite a bit of on-line content as well.

Similar in spirit but much different in execution, Boston.com has a new free photo blog entitled The Big Picture.  So far it looks to have photo essays on the order of 5-20 photographs, but it importantly makes them BIG.  Finally, an online photography source that acknowledges that people have larger monitors and more bandwidth now.  The editor explains the rationale and such here.  I’m sure the quality will vary a bit since this blog is taking photographs from various feeds and wire services, but I’m excited about the possibilities.

- Jim Nickelson

Click here to read an intriguing article in the April, 2008 issue of Vanity Fair about Robert Frank’s recent trip to China at age 83.

At last week’s salon at VoxPhotographs (hosted by Brenton Hamilton of Maine Media Workshops) we were discussing Robert Frank’s The Americans, along with Aaron Siskind’s radical (for the times) photographs - to try and better understand the American fifties culture. Brenton mentioned the Vanity Fair article, and a friend who happened to have the magazine handy lent it to me. I’m glad I read it.

Frank’s childhood in Switzerland was replete with detachment, disillusionment and parental tension. He learned early to instinctively parse the essence of the scenes pulsing around him and used this insight to make what some people feel are the most iconic shots of American life ever made. The beat artists and poets of the 50’s drew him like a magnet and his inspirations were Walker Evans and Bill Brandt. So, it comes as no surprise that he was particularly in tune to documenting the fringes of any situation.

You’re not going to like Robert Frank when you finish this article, but I gained some serious insight into his work by reading it. There is no doubt in my mind that The Americans forever changed photography in America and beyond. Pretty important stuff.

Most astonishing is to understand that Frank shot 28,000 photographs on his Guggenheim-supported trips zigzagging across the USA in 1955-56, and that in the end he chose only 83 carefully sequenced images to represent the absolute essence of his impressions.

From our discussion last week I learned Frank has come to despise the endless attention The Americans has received at the expense of all of the rest of his creative work since. He is sick to death of talking and answering questions about it. But he has made millions from it and is internationally renowned because of it. He would have made his father proud - a man whose own dream to be a famous interior designer was quashed by a loveless marriage, leaving him cold, distant and bitter.

Well, if nothing else, Robert Frank understands the uniqueness of America by observing his adopted country over the last five decades - as he says in the article - “Essentially, an American is a free man. There is no history. The American Dream? Well, I don’t know. But there, everything is possible.” Well and truly said from my experience. Only in America.

Okay, I’ve only been studying the history of photography for 4 years, but where the heck have I been with respect to David Plowden?

You have to see it for yourself. All I can say at this point is: wow.

www.davidplowden.com

Images ©David Plowden, courtesy Laurence Miller Gallery, NYC

On March 16, the NY Times published an article about the behemoth of a photograph collection at the Smithsonian - only 13 million images from 19 different museums and comprising 700 separate collections - and the fact that the Institution has finally figured out that collection should be on the web so it can be more easily found by the rest of us.

Well, I would have left putting all of these photographs online in my TO DO box for years as well, but there is a brave soul out there who has decreed that it must begin. Her name is Merry Foresta and she is in charge of this project and former senior curator of photography for the entire Smithsonian  Institution.

I have to wonder why the heck they didn’t start this 10 years ago. But with that many images, it will be a long, long project stretching years ahead, so I’m glad they’ve finally figured out that this treasure-trove of photographs - the Smithsonian’s mission was to record and catalog the world (no small mission statement) and it started in 1846 -  deserves to be seen by that world.

Read more at:

www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/arts/artsspecial/12photos.html?_r=1&oref=slogin 

Thanks to Lynn Karlin for bringing this to my attention…

Don’t you feel it heating up?

This blog has had almost 800 readers over the last 30 days (you are a shy bunch, though - no comments coming my way!)!

All of us want to stay connected to our profession of fine art photography and it’s getting easier and easier to keep up on news and photographers from Maine, New England and the world.

Here’s a fantastic resource for extra reading from the iphotocentral site:

www.iphotocentral.com/links/links.php
I posted the subscription URL to Alex Novak’s fine monthly E-Photo newsletter earlier, but here it is again:

iphotocentral.com/subscribe/subscribe.php

Have you seen www.photoblogs.org? …there is some serious stuff here. The site started in 2002 with 15 blogs and today there are almost 29,000 blogs on it!!!! Why not upload your photos here and get some feedback and let others know what you are doing?

Here’s another really fun place to visit:

photon.sevensquareinches.comFriendly, great discussions and postings…really worthwhile.

So…if March is getting to you, go where it’s HOT and meet some new people, get some new ideas and insights, and get connected to your profession.

Edgar Allen Beem has been writing about the arts for decades. In fact, when my husband, painter Linden Frederick (www.lindenfrederick.com) and I moved to Maine in 1989, we discovered Beem’s book Maine Art Now and fought over who got to read it in the evenings. We had no idea Maine was so arts centered and supportive when we moved here. It was the lifestyle, the ocean, etc. that drew us. Well, Maine Art Now completely changed the way we looked at our adopted state.

Ed Beem now writes for the Photo District News among other publications and most recently started a photoblog for Yankee Magazine. www.yankeemagazine.com/blogs/art/artblogs . I just learned that The Americans has just been reissued. I didn’t know. And another tidbit - Robert Frank has lived in near seclusion in Mabou, Nova Scotia for ages. Linden and I were there a few years ago and didn’t even know we were walking in the shadow of a great artist and one who turned the entire photography world on its head in the 50’s.

Ed also writes about the recent salon at VoxPhotographs. It’s by invitation only and allows seasoned professionals in the arts, with a big interest/focus on photography to come together, relax and share their expertise. Remember the old-style salons where people would get together and actually talk about intellectual things - literature, art, music? Too much tv, too little talk about ideas. We need more salons.

If you aren’t connecting to these resources constantly and you are a fine art photographer, move on over and give up your space to someone else who is more interested. Maine tends to make for a good excuse for staying isolated. Not any more. Some of us are changing that, one posting at a time.

If you don’t have a life, check out these two comprehensive and mammoth sites…

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Photolinks.com can be a problem: it is HUGE. You could spend weeks on this site it has so many resources for photographers and by photographers.

www.photolinks.com

is the URL if by any chance you haven’t discovered this site yet. With almost 900 new websites added in the last 30 days, I’ve got to wonder if there is anybody who isn’t on it? If you aren’t, take a few minutes to sign up. It’s free. Once a week check out the What’s New page, and the tips and techniques page is a very good resource.

Even though there is a Fine Art Photography category, most of the photographers listed are commercial photographers. In fact, most of the photographers listed on the whole site are commercial photographers. Maybe many of these photographers fall under both categories, but for me - unless you earn most of your photograph income from sales in a gallery, you are not a fine ART photographer.

Check out this site and see what it does for you.

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Have you seen blogflux.com? Here is the link to their Photography blogs pages…it makes for some fascinating reading if you can’t sleep at night - it’s addictive! You get to see what people all over the world are shooting and thinking and saying…

http://dir.blogflux.com/cat/photography.html

I really don’t know how to describe these pages, but people have LOTS of time to talk about themselves and their work these days. There are some really informative blogs on there as well. There’s enough info. at each blog link to help you look at just the ones that interest you. Believe me, it will take a while.