From PetaPixel:
South African photographer Graeme Williams was attending the opening of the Johannesburg Art Fair earlier this month when he was shocked to see his own photo on a gallery wall with credit being given to African American artist Hank Willis Thomas.
. . . .
The photo wasn’t exactly Williams’ version: it had been “remixed” by Thomas.
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“By slightly whitening part of the image (possibly some comment on whiteness vs blackness) African American artist, Hank Willis Thomas, has attempted to make this image his own,” Williams wrote on Facebook after his discovery. “My unaltered image has been published and exhibited many times. In 2008, as Barack Obama sought the Presidency and raced for the position against John McCain, Newsweek magazine ran a story asking each candidate to discuss what best personified their world view. This image that I took […] was used to illustrate Obama’s world view.”
The Guardian reports that Williams was even more disturbed when he saw the price tag on the photo: it was being sold for $36,000, or 25 times more than what the photographer has ever sold the photo for (around $1,200).
. . . .
“The changes were absolutely minimal,” Williams tells The Guardian. “It’s theft, plagiarism, appropriation. It’s a kind of fine line where you say it falls. Within the art world there’s an acceptance that you can use images within the artistic framework to create something that has meaning different to the original image. This was the exact same of my original photograph and all he had done is take an image that he likes and call it his own.”
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“I can see why [Williams] would be frustrated,” Thomas tells artnet News. “He said to me that he didn’t feel like I had altered the image enough. The question of ‘enough’ is a critical question.
“This is an image that was taken almost 30 years ago that has been distributed and printed hundreds of thousands of times all over the world. At what point can someone else begin to wrestle with these images and issues in a different way… much the way that people would quote from a book?”
Link to the rest at PetaPixel
The illustration at the top of this post is a partial copy of each artwork. You can see the complete version of each at the OP.
Even I, as a modestly skilled Photoshop user, could alter these photos in that manner. They have not been transformed, and no particular talent was involved. Had they been used in a large collage, that might be different. This is simply editing. The man who took credit for someone else’s work should be ashamed.
agreed jacqueline
I could pop any photo into ‘preview’ app that comes standard on apple, move the button to black and white and in less than two seconds, it is done.
Reminds me of old Ward Churchill the pretend indian, who was head of native studies at Colo U, who took an asian man’s lithograph, flipped it horizontally so what used to be on the lef was now on the right, signed it and called it his own. It was of the exhibits in firing churchill without apology, aside from the face that he couldnt prove native american providence, and had apparently also plaguerized [sp] others’ written works.
Piece of work these guys. A mix? no. A copy that can be made b and w by a smart gerbil.
I can’t help noticing that the original is almost 30 years old, so if the old copyright limits were still in effect (and valid in S. Africa) he’d have no recourse.
I hope he litigated the hell out of that guy. What a load of crap.
This is taking a book, changing all of the names/places and then claiming it an original. Credits needed to the original artist at least …
More like changing the American spellings to British and claiming it as yours. After all, that colour really changes things 😉
At what point can someone else begin to wrestle with these images and issues in a different way… much the way that people would quote from a book?”
Quoting from a book is very different from publishing the book in a different font.