Re: Fine Art Reproductions

On 3/31/99, Charles C. Mann <ccm[_at_]crocker.com> wrote:
>
> In a slightly different vein, I recently met the photographer Lauren
> Greenfield, a professional photographer (National Geographic, NY Times,
> etc.) whose work recently was "appropriated," as I believe the term is,
> by a painter named Damien Loeb. Greenfield published a book of photos
> of LA teens a few years ago. The cover was a picture of four kids
> driving around. Loeb took this image -- or, rather, painted a
> completely faithful copy -- onto a large canvas and juxtaposed it
> against a background taken from another photograph, a gory picture of
> a white South African cop shooting some prone black people. By the
> juxtaposition, the kids in Greenfield's picture are made to seem to
> be speeding by the killing, laughing at the scene. The copy of her
> photograph occupies about 40% of the painting and is obviously the
> subject. Loeb exhibited the picture and others like it in the
> prestigious Mary Boone gallery in Manhattan in January, where it
> apparently sold for about $15K. Moreover, Greenfield told me, the
> painting has been reproduced in many places, including the magazine
> Artforum -- it's apparently become a sort of signature image for the
> painter. My question is whether there's a copyright-infringement
> issue.

There might be, but there might also be a moral rights issue as well. Check out the Wojnarowicz case in SDNY (745 F Supp 130), where an artist prevailed under the New York moral rights law (which might survive pre-emption under VARA because VARA doesn't cover copies) when his work was portrayed in a context that was contrary to its original. The fact that this was displayed and sold in a New York gallery might make it fall squarely under that precedent.

• Vance R. Koven * phone: 617-482-3852 *
• attorney at law * fax: 617-482-4972 *
• 20 Park Plaza Ste. 633 * net: vrkoven[_at_]world.std.com *
• Boston, MA 02116 * *

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