Conscientious

"In an interview with the newsmagazine Focus, Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner has called for a law to better protect the private sphere on the Internet and has taken Street View to task. 'This comprehensive photo offensive is nothing less than a million-fold violation of the private sphere,' Aigner said. [...] 'I would like to see a reversal of the present system. Citizens shouldn't have to take action to prevent the publication of their private data. Rather, Google should be required to obtain the consent of citizens when they want to publish a photo of their private home.'" - story

Francisco Reina's Strauss' Legacy is a bit on the obvious side, but his other projects are quite interesting. I'm not sure I understand all of his project statements, though. (thanks, Wesley!)

Another follow-up, this one to my post about fair use. Here is a post about sculptors who produced a piece out of a photo by Alex Brown. I actually knew of that case, Alex had emailed me before I wrote my fair-use post. In my response to Alex's email I wrote him that I considered this a case of plagiarism. That said, here is a suggestion for how to solve this particular case: Have the sculptors add Alex as a co-creator of the work and have them give him a share of whatever money they might make (if they make any). This solution might actually work for a lot of similar cases, and it would satisfy those who think it's obvious plagiarism (the creative work of the photographer would be preserved, since he would be given credit for his work), and those who think it's not (because the derived art work - if we want to call it that - would just remain part of the art world).

After reading my review (of sorts) of the Malick Sidibe book, Sean Hallisey emailed me with some comments about Dash Snow; and he wrote this following paragraph, which is too interesting not to share (quoted with permission, of course).

Let's be bold! Compare Malick Sidibe's photographs, especially the many ones taken at dances or social events, with Dash Snow's party Polaroids. No, really, I mean it. You have to ignore the slightly different media (b/w versus colour, the film cameras versus the instant ones), you have to ignore the backgrounds of the subjects, and you're off to the most amazing journey. But you might think it's a weird comparison, isn't it?

Photography doesn't have much of a history - compared with many other art forms or human inventions that we take for granted in our daily lives. What are not even two hundred years compared with cave paintings that date back thirty five thousand years (give or take a millennium or two)? But then, our world has changed much over the course of the last thirty five thousand years, and a large part of that change has happened over the past few hundred years - or maybe just one hundred years, if we look at all the various things we now take for granted: Synthetic antibiotics were invented after photography, as were air travel or computers. It is true, we could probably imagine a world without air travel or computers, but I'm not so sure we really would want to do without antibiotics any longer. Plus, there are societal changes we cannot imagine living without any longer: Universal suffrage, civil liberties, human rights. So despite its relative youth, photography has - literally - witnessed a lot of change in the way humans live. What makes photography unique, of course, is that it offers us visual testimony of that change, by showing us images taken in the past.

Art critic Regina Hackett just blogged about this portrait painted by Jesse Edwards (see the artist's website here). I couldn't help but think about Rob's post about 'fair use' from the other day again: When or where does 'fair use' begin (or end)? When is a use not fair?

(updated below - twice)

I'll admit that Alaska is probably the US state I know the least about, so I enjoyed seeing Ben Huff's (work in progress) The Last Road North.

"Between 1995 and 2007 more than 200,000 farmers committed suicide in India. [...] In my view, this is an act of helplessness in a state of momentary despair: a call to society for help. Help not only for the farmer's immediate family members - widowed wife, old and ailing parents, young children, but also for farming in general and for other farmers, like him." - Verena Hanschke (thanks, Hugh!)

"Seattle photographer Mike Hipple [...] received a letter from the lawers of a sculptor named Jack Mackie. Apparently a photograph that Mike took 10 years previous and was selling as stock, featured a woman dancing along the sidewalk with a portion of Jack's sculpture 'Dance Steps on Broadway' visible. Mr. Mackie claimed copyright infringement in the letter." (story)

Reinis Hofmanis' photos of art models might be the best ones I've seen so far (via).

This one's from Ian Elsom who wrote in an email: "In the end, though, a photographer's honesty and integrity are at the core of any Too Similar issue."

Ulrich Gebert is one of those German photographers who are so conceptual that they don't even have a website (or whose website is so obscure that I can't find it). Regardless, even though very conceptual photography sometimes is a bit hard to digest, when well done - as it is in his case - it can be an incredibly rewarding experience. His current show at Winkleman Gallery is still up until February 13, 2010, so if you're in New York here's your chance to see the artist's work. Everybody else might have to be happy with only seeing this pdf portfolio (which is quite nice actually).

I was going to write something about Matthew Robert Hughes's portraiture (via), but then I figured I might as well have people look and make up their own minds.

"Billionaire Michael Dell's investment firm, MSD Capital LP, has acquired about 185,000 vintage photographic prints from the Magnum Photos agency in what is thought to be among the largest photo transactions in history." (story)