I interrupt the long silence on this blog to ask you: photographers, how jealously do you guard your copyright?
This post brought to you from Art Works 2011 and Strobist
Yesterday, I attended Art Works 2011, a fantastic conference seeking to endow artists with a little more business sense. I could go on and on about the great speakers I had a chance to hear and meet and the wealth of information I managed to capture, but for the sake of brevity (and our 3-minute attention spans), I’ll cut to the chase. One keynote address was provided by Jennifer Dickson, a highly regarded Ottawa-based photographer. In her speech, she advised all artists to guard their copyright ferociously against “thieving bastards” and copycats. In particular, she recounted an instance in which a student had presented her with a portfolio; the student had mimicked Dickson’s style and dedicated the portfolio to her. Dickson was neither touched nor impressed; on the contrary, she saw the work as copyright infringement and reprimanded the student for it.
On the other hand, David Hobby of Strobist recently published a post defending Justin Lanier’s reproduction of Dan Winters’ portrait of Bono, arguing that many artists learn and develop their own style in part by mimicking the style of their masters.
As much as I detest outright copyright infringement and the disregard of intellectual property, I’m with David on this one. There is – and rightly so – a difference between claiming someone else’s work as your own, and mimicking a style or technique for your own education and improvement. I’ve also been known to reproduce some of my favourite images; far from trying to become or upstage the artists I admire, adding those techniques to my repertoire is helping me find my own style, by picking and choosing the elements that speak to me and adding my own twist to them. And I know that if I dedicated any of my work to a mentor who discounted it and cited copyright law to me, I would change mentors in a hurry.
What do you think? Is imitation the sincerest form of flattery, or should we all find our own path without crossing those of the artists we admire?
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ReplyDeletehttp://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/08/01/networked-knowledge-combinatorial-creativity/
I certainly agree with you about siding with David Hobby on this one. I have often talked about Charles H. Duell (US Patent Officer) who is quoted as saying "everything that has already been invented has been invented" in 1899. When I say this everyone always laughs and either says or is thinking 'preposterous'. I tend to disagree. I mean aren't we living in a world of evolution. Things are constantly evolving and life is continually building, deconstructing, and reconstructing in new and varied ways. I doubt very much that anything we build is really original. I mean even the person who invented the wheel probably had seen something that influenced him or her to make that decision, don't you think? I'm not 100% convinced but I think that many of the things we do come from something else. Therefore I definitely had a hard time truly believing that Jennifer Dickson would not be amused and excited that some student trying to learn would want to learn from her, one of the best. I was especially shocked when she said this as someone who prides herself on being a lecturer. I mean as a lecturer, teacher, facilitator, shouldn't we encourage people to build on our experiences and grow with new ideas. I guess to sum this up I have to say that I love Hugh MacLeod's (great American artist who wrote Ignore Everybody And 39 Other Keys to Creativity) approach to copyright and copyright infringement; Hugh says "look I have been at this for many years and have a ton of drawings if someone wants to start copying me then they have over 10,000 drawings to catch up."
ReplyDeleteSo yes outright infringement is a terrible thing but someone looking to be inspired or to learn from others work is great, at least that is my thought.
Anonymous - Thank you for the link, I did very much enjoy the article; it sums up so well the idea that all creativity is built on a foundation of someone else's creativity.
ReplyDeleteShawn - Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I completely agree - building on previous ideas is at the core of all evolution, so I'm baffled when some expect (today's) art to be any different. I also had a hard time believing that a lecturer with Jennifer Dickson's experience wouldn't enjoy being a role model and therefore being emulated. She made some good points in her speech, but I found it difficult to get over this one and her advice to never give art away or contribute artwork to charity. But that's another story for another post, I suppose :)