Getty + Photoshop = get rich

[Ross Chambers]

This guy has sold prints for AU$ 2,400.

A fool and their money...

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/...902-258m4.html

[rawhead]

I don't know, I'm actually ambivalent about this one. If the "artist" were claiming that he's a photographer and that his works were "photographs" then obviously there's an issue. But if he's claiming he's a "photo artist" *and* if the licensing of the stock image from Getty was one that would allow secondary use with alteration, then I might tend to side with the artist.

For example Andy Warhol took photos of Cambell Soup cans and lined them up and called it art. And many people agree with him. I don't see there being a material difference between that and what this Australian dude did.

Now, of course, if the Getty licensing specifically forbade the kind of secondary use, then there's a violation there.

[Nicholas Lindan]

Another odious appropriator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherrie_Levine

So why not join the party ...

[Poisson Du Jour]

The gallery did the right thing. Misappropriation of works as "original" or "one's own" is irritatingly commonplace. The National Association for the Visual Arts (in Australia) carried a piece about this last February I think.
Interesting how this debacle involved both analogue (obtaining negatives) and digital (recombo) works.
I do wonder though about the licensing that Getty implies or grants and whether such provisions were effectively breached as part of the reconstruction of the images. Possibly the same licensing it provisions for images signed up via Flickr.

[Jenni]

Yeah, I would hate to buy a print thinking it was an original only to learn it was a stock image. The artist needed to better inform the gallery of his methods and his art. I agree with the gallery.

[Ross Chambers]

The split photographs on the Herald website as above are the Getty originals/the "artistic appropriation"

I reckon even my cack-handed Photoshop skills could pull these off.

[Poisson Du Jour]

How they qualify as "art" at all beats me.

[Chris Johnson]

I think Nicholas's term "odious appropriator" fits well, most of us have ethics............. and originality.

[blansky]

For example Andy Warhol took photos of Cambell Soup cans and lined them up and called it art.

But Warhol didn't abscond with someone else's PICTURES of soup cans.

[BMbikerider]

Personally speaking I think that it not the 'done' thing. It is a form of fraud which in itself = dishonesty. Yes he may be a dab hand with Photoshop so why not get out there and take pictures of his own and then use photoshop?

Photoshop images are one of the reasons I am drifting further and further away from digital imagery. I don't think it is as honest or as skilful as traditional photography and nor will it ever be. There is a whole world of difference in making a picture sitting at a desk with an image and fiddling about here and there and elsewhere using adobe which is someone else's technology. And then looking at a scene and visualising what you can do with it in the darkroom using the skills you have in your head and hands and to a degree your heart. My ex wife thought that digital imagery was a subject that 'had no soul'. It was one of the things we actually agreed upon.

I also look upon digital images and comparing them with an item of furniture made by a master craftsman and a piece of furniture that is mass produced in some factory somewhere. The latter will never have the feel of quality of the former