Whose Image is This? Ownership in the Digital Age Commentary by Carlos X

Scan of young boy.....

My photographer friend ripped off this image from the soul of a young boy by a well on the edge of this village we used to hang out in and published it in a major University press. I helped - shilling for him, interacting with the natives, disarming them - in order to catch that "candid" shot.

He probably will get pissed at me for using the word "ripped off." After all, he brought some bread to the boy's mother, and later wrote some patronizing prose about the boy's "endangered culture" when he published the photo. He even brought the boy's family a copy of the photo on a later trip ... or was that another family in another village?. Besides, he says he's never made any money off the photo anyway - even now that he's a big time international photographer.

And some people can't understand why the the Hopi's of San Juan Pueblo charge ten bucks for taking pictures at their holy celebrations each June....

Now I'm ripping off both the boy (now a man) and the big-time photographer (now a richer man). I don't know if they know it, or how they feel about it. Maybe I'll get sued. Maybe the photographer's glad I'm not mentioning his name.

Whose image is this, anyway?

Postcard

??? scanned some scantily-clad women he found in a magazine and superimposed a postcard on top of it. (Doesn't remember which magazine, and found no credit on the postcard. Furthermore, ??? is not even this student's real name. He doesn't want his mother to see how he expresses his teenage desires!) Then he filled the block type on the postcard with images of his favorite rock group.

Now, rock stars are public figures and make plenty of money marketing themselves. I suppose their bodies might be considered fair game, even if ??? forgot to plug their rock group's name. Maybe they'll like the image and give Truque a job designing their next album cover.

As for me, I'm interested in the girls. Anybody know who they are? Their bodies, especially certain parts of their bodies, are what attract me to this image. I wonder if they signed model releases....

Suzanna'a refusal:

I'm a writer, songwriter, and poetess. My agent told me not to publish anything on the Internet. Says it trivilizes my work, opens me up to plagarism, and lowers my value in the market. So I deleted my stuff from my World Wide Web site.

Now, here's some Lorem Ipsum for you.

Actually, none of this work is mine. My teacher did it for me, even wrote this text, inspired by my refusal to give away my work. "Turn your refusal into a work of art," he said.)

I did smear some Photoshop paint on this closeup of my face that somebody shot with the video camera. And I wrote the intelligible, tailing words of this passage.

"Is this what you want to tell the world?" my teacher asked.

"Yeah," I said. Get the message?

Damaso's heads

This image began as a joke: Damaso holds the heads of his friends. But it led to a history lesson about ancient Aztec skull racks and the not-so-ancient Mexican government practice of hanging the heads of revolutionaries in public view to deter future uprisings.

So, in the tradition of Diego Rivera, Damaso decides to build a collage. Of heads. Where does he get those heads? From Rivera's paintings of Mexican history.... and, while he's at it he takes religious icons from Gorman and whole landscapes from Velasco, all clipped from this CD whose vendor includes a special note proclaiming the images to be in "the public domain."

As the process continues, Damaso begins to realize it is he who is choosing the personages to be included. Are Martin Luther King and Beavis and Butthead in the public domain? Has the piece, laden with borrowed imagery, evolved into something indicative of Damaso and his sensibilities and environment, or does it still belong to Rivera, Gorman, and Velasco, et al.

Whose image is it?

Alfonso Palafox: Bug2

Alfonso thinks this dinosaur skull is real cool. He's already onto something when he cut's modifies "Survival of the Fittest" and scratches in "Survival of the World." It takes his instructor to point out the resulting irony of the still legible advertising copy, which proclaims technological solutions and other "thoughts on international business." Alfonso runs with this and consciously adorns the image with high-tech grafitti.

Whose image is this?

Alfonso Palafox: Ass

Again, Alfonso can't resist this cool image of a claw-like hand. To him, it must represent danger, for he turns it into a statement against drugs and violence. He superimposes considerable imagery and text, adding his own message. Still the central image is the claw, created by ... who knows?

Whose image is it?

Julian Abrajan: Paradise

This image is all Julian's. Interestingly, it incorporates several other images as well, but they are all his. It began as a video scan of his face, all but obscured now under layers of paint. (Can you detect the eye?) On top of this colorful palette, he superimposes text, and in the text adds more images.

Julian Abrajan: A natural

Belongs to Julian. Scanned photos, but of himself. Urged by his teacher to incorporate text, and influenced by exposure to commerical art mags, Julian absorbs and creates.

Julian Abrajan: the hide

Imagery is Julian's. but the idea begins with a story in LA Times Magazine years ago, read and related to Julian by his teacher, about a man always standing and watching from the periphery, the Mexican in the serape.

Whose idea is it?

Antonio Tamayo: Luna y jaguar

Antonio consciously gathered from magazines the dichotomous uncredited imagery to represent himself at the crux of two worlds. His teacher helped him condense his idea into the words "earthly" and "celestial."

Then he turned to Frida Kahlo to anchor his work, taking liberites with it, but leaving a while line to separate his work from hers.

Whose image is it?

Mike Demon in Flames

Mike never liked the idea of altering another's image. He prefers to alter himself. Here's one of his alter egos. Video game makers: Keep your eye on this guy.

Mike Wind

An original by Mike.... He created the mask, fashioned a watery background, created the special effects ... or did he? It's time to talk about the programmers who designed the tools. In this case, it's HSC software. But wait a minute, that's a corporate name. Who are the humans who actually wrote the code. Oh yeah, that's Kai Krause, or is he just the cover boy, the one who's acquired star status? Let me check....

Here it is, hidden within the menu bar, flashing by as I start up the program: KPT Bryce, written by fulano de tal.

Who's image is this?

Truckmagic

Truck doesn't waste too much time thinking about ownership and could care less about anything beyond screen resolution. He knows that images on the Internet are fair game, and spends his time surfing and creating links to things he likes.

Here he quickly and skillfully makes use of a video camera and Photoshop's light and magic.