Shepard's work of art

The hope poster, shepard fairey. The iconic sell out artist, not in a bad way of course. A few months back “they” found out where Shepard got the famous Obama hope picture. If you aren’t aware, Shepard made a poster in support of Obama which went on to become one of the most popular depictions of the now president. The so called controversy revolves around the fact that Shepard created the image from a photograph. This photograph was captured by freelance photographer Mannie Garcia for the AP. I don’t much care for the resulting legal battle that must have played out. I’m simply questioning the entire idea that after over a year of this poster being an iconic symbol of a candidate someone would figure out where the photo came from and then start this litigation. How many pictures has Mannie taken of Obama? How many pictures of Obama are there? At what point does the photograph stop having any kind of relevant “ownership”. The original picture that Shepard used wasn’t some kind of master stroke of photography. It was a digital capture of a moment in time, I’ll guess 1/600th of a second, give or take. Within that moment a number of other people were capturing that same man from slightly different angles at other fractions of seconds. I don’t have issue with all those photographers owning each of those practically indistinguishable photographs, they should sell them to media outlets because they are relevant and if they don’t get paid then some events don’t get seen.

No, I’m trying to understand what it means to own an image to the extent that the AP owns rights to Shepard poster (so to speak). I understand that the AP is hurting like all old media is, people don’t care about giving them credit and they are hurting in this new world. I wouldn’t be surprised if anyone at AP really cared apart from the lawyers, who just happen to get paid to ‘blah blah blah’ over this type of thing. I’m thinking beyond that trivial bull shit. What I want to know, where does the photographer’s image end and the shared experience of “real” happen. In other words, was Shepard building an iconic image of the photograph or the man.

Mannie didn’t see the hope poster and gasp “my picture!” nor did the AP, no one did. Over eager bloggers poured through thousands of images of Obama over laying the hope poster on practically the same image but not quite. Until someone finally hit it, called Sheperd out and got a well deserved pat on the the back. Thus creating work for lawyers, huray! Then everyone gets to argue if what Shepard did is original, as if anything is original or a copy (but that is another story).

I want to know how one owns another’s image. The focused photons reflected from a human face are allowed entrance to a reservoir beyond a mechanically operated shutter activated by another human who holds the device. Does the engineer who developed the color filter, or the shutter mechanism get any credit? Does the auto focus get a line in some AP document? How does it all fit together? If we put all the pictures ever taken of Obama, from every camera phone to every still frame from every camcorder, into a machine that stiched them all together what would we have? A carbon copy of a man. Who owns that copy? Does obama get credit for this composite? It is like reality, we all see it, we all get an impression and keep some part of it. We go into the real and take out of it, yet we don’t take anything. I’ve only ever seen Obama reproduced. A fraction of his carbon copy.

Perhaps this idea seems far fetched, who is like Obama? Not many people have everyone around clicking photos of them. Yet, we will. I don’t doubt that the future will record more and more reality, digitize and tag it. This information, arrangements of pixels that relate to the accumulation of photos bounced of the shared reality, will flood the network. There will be a constantly updated reflection of the real world. Will this change how we own images or will is simple destroy it? We will all be reflections, who will own us? Who can take that reflected reality and change it, anyone? no one?

I’m not all that sure what it means. I built a sort of composite of Obama, from a simple Google search I put together about 40 pictures of obama all placed one on top of the other with a 5% opacity. I’m not giving any credit, because I don’t think any is due. Not because I don’t value the work of people who go out and capture the real world. No I don’t want to give anyone credit for what I made because it isn’t Someone’s Obama, it is simply Obama. Just some guy. He could be a potted plant or a grain of rice but it is a man.