May 12, 2010

 That's the good news. The bad news is that an additional $15,000 is still needed in order to publish and distribute War Is Only Half The Story, Volume 3, featuring images by the 2009 winners of The Aftermath Grant, Asim Rafiqui and Louie Palu and finalists Saiful Huq Omi, Ami Vitale, Davide Monteleone, Andrea Bruce, Donald Weber, and Rodgrigo Abd.

To raise the remaining funds, The Aftermath Project is appealing for donations and selling prints by each of the grant winners and finalists. If you've ever thought you'd love to own an Ami Vitale image from Kashmir, or one of Donald Weber's images from Chernobyl, here is your chance. Prices have been greatly discounted, and range from about $400 to $1,000. Many of the prints are signed.

To view the images available, visit the home page of The Aftermath Project,www.theaftermathproject.org, and click on the PDF.

Sara Terry, founder of The Aftermath Project, is also appealing to past and prospective grant applicants. She writes, "To all you photographers who have applied, or hope to apply for an Aftermath grant, you probably know that we don't charge an application fee, and we intend to keep it that way. But any donation you can make — even $10 — will be a big help in keeping us going — so that we can help you tell the stories you're so passionately committed to."

Donations can be made through PayPal or by mailing checks to:

The Aftermath Project

4900 Glenalbyn Dr.

Los Angeles, CA 90065

(Photo © Rodrigo Abd. From Abd's project: "Reclaiming the Dead: mass graves in Guatemala, a story only partially told.")

May 12, 2010

 Some awards bestow fame, others money. And then there are those that amount to a grateful pat on the back and a plaque. Operation Smile’s Universal Smile Award, given last week to photographers Melanie Dunea and Nigel Parry last week, falls into that latter category.

The two photographers, who happen to be married, have documented various Operation Smile missions to Africa, India, China and other places over the last six years. Operation Smile is an NGO that sends medical teams around the world to repair common facial deformities such as cleft lips and palates, and trains local doctors how to perform the procedures so they can treat future cases themselves. A 45 minute operation, Parry says, can completely turn around the lives of a child and their parents. “It just lifts the spirits. It’s incredible.”

Parry and his wife got involved after contributing prints to a fundraiser exhibition sponsored by a magazine. There, they met an Operation Smile representative who invited them to attend an upcoming mission, and the two photographers have donated their time and talent “as and when we can” ever since, Parry explains.

“All we’re doing [professionally] is photographing faces. To use what you do to benefit someone, other than give money, because anybody can chuck money—to do what you do to help someone out is what the reward is,” Parry says. “The look on the parents’ faces in the kids’ faces afterwards is quite astounding—they always get a mirror and they look at themselves, and they just won’t let the mirror go.”

Dunea and Parry have produced a book [A Journey of Smiles] and various exhibitions to help Operation Smile raise money for its medical services. And the photographers provide images that Operation Smile “can use willy-nilly” for its promotions, Parry says. “It’s the kind of [arrangement] that photographers normally hate, but not in this case.”

Posted by David Walker on May 12, 2010 at 5:13 PM

May 11th, 2010

Honorees at the 26th Annual International Center of Photography Infinity Awards, held last night in New York, paid tribute both to photography’s continuing power and to the photo community that has fostered its best practitioners. Addressing “those who say that photojournalism is dying,” Reza, winner of the Photojournalism award, said that 43,000 years after the first cave painters documented their world, “the visual artist has never been more important. Our picture community is connecting people."

The video that introduced Reza, who founded a photojournalism school for Afghan photographers, noted that he had been imprisoned in his native Iran for his photos. He was not the only honoree who had suffered for his work. South African photographer Peter Magubane, who was given the Cornell Capa Award, spent 586 days in solitary confinement in 1969 under his country’s apartheid regime. In his powerfully emotional speech, he quoted an African saying, “You are a person because of others,” and thanked his family, his editors and colleagues, including Robert Stevens, former photo editor at Time, and photographer Eve Arnold who introduced him to Susan Meiselas who, in turn, introduced him to photo editor John G. Morris, his mentor and friend.

Morris, who while working for Life edited Robert Capa’s images from D-Day and went on to run Magnum’s New York office, accepted last night’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He paid tribute both to the editors he’s worked with, and “most of all to thousands of photographers. I think of them as my real children.”

Other award winners included Lorna Simpson, who received the award for Art photography; author Luc Sante for his book Folk Photography: The Real-Photo Postcard; and Gilbert C. Maurer of Hearst, who was given the ICP Trustees Award. Raphael Dallaporta, who has created a series of still lifes of anti-personnel land mines and architectural photos of Paris buildings where slaves have been forced to work, won the Young Photographer award. French photographer Daniele Tamagni won the Applied/Fashion/Advertising Award for his book, Gentlemen of Bacongo, which documents the colorful street fashion of the dandies in the Democratic Republic of Congo known as “Sapeurs.” Sarah Greenough of the National Gallery of Art received the Publication award for Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans. Greenough told the audience that she learned about photography from visiting the library to look at books by Edward Steichen and Paul Strand, but her first look at The Americans had the greatest impact. “Everything suddenly became clear, I knew right there that photography had grabbed my heart and mind."

The 2010 Infinity Award winners were selected by book publisher Chris Boot, gallery owner Peter MacGill of the Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York, and Carol McKusker, curator at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego.

More than 600 guests attended the ICP gala, which was held at Pier Sixty Chelsea Piers. Willis “Buzz” Hartshorn, the director of ICP, hosted the ceremony. Among the attendees were photographers Mary Ellen Mark, Mark Seliger, Craig McDean and Nigel Parry; Harper's Bazaar editor in chief Glenda Bailey; NBC Today show host Ann Curry and ABC's Christiane Amanpour; photo editors Michele McNally, Chris Dougherty and Aidan Sullivan; fashion designer Calvin Klein; writer Ingrid Sischy; curators Thelma Golden of the Studio Museum of Harlem and Peter Galassi of the Museum of Modern Art; book publisher Darius Himes; Aperture book editor Denise Wolff; gallerist L. Parker Stephenson; and rep and Infinity Award co-chair Jed Root. 

–reporting by Amber Terranova

(Photo: Lifetime Achievement Award winner John G. Morris and presenter Christiane Amanpour. 

Photo © Stephanie Badini Photography. )

May 11, 2010

In Copyright Case, Court Rejects Corbis's Bulk Registration Practices

Photographers who have participated over the years in Corbis’s copyright registration program may have less copyright protection than they think—or need. The reason is because the bulk copyright registration forms that Corbis filed starting in the mid 1990s are missing a crucial piece of information: the names of most of the photographers.

Photographers Marc and David Muench learned that the hard way last week when a federal court in New York rejected their copyright claim (09-CV-2669) against textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The Muenchs alleged that the publisher used approximately 180 of their images beyond the scope of a usage license. But the court said the Muenchs didn’t have grounds to sue because their images weren’t properly registered.

Corbis had registered the Muench images as part of various compilations in 1997, 1999, 2001, and 2006. By contrast, the court said that 20 images that David Muench had registered himself “appear to be properly registered,” so the Muenchs can pursue their infringement claim for those images.

“Because the Copyright Act is clear on its face, i.e., a copyright registration must contain certain pieces of information, including the author’s name, the registrations at issue here cover only the database as a whole (the compilation), but do not cover [the Meunschs’] individual contributions,” the court said.

The compilation referred to was a collection of images Corbis created in order to registering copyrights all at once. Corbis started the bulk registration program so it could pursue infringers on its own behalf, but the program was also billed as a benefit to photographers because it streamlined the cumbersome copyright registration process.

Under the terms of the program, photographers were asked to assign their copyright temporarily to Corbis for the express purpose of the bulk registrations. Corbis then registered the images as a compilation under its own name, without listing the individual photographers whose images made up the compilation, and then transferred copyright ownership back to the photographers.

The company’s decision to forego naming each photographer was based upon an advisory letter from the US Copyright Office. On behalf of Corbis and other stock agencies, the Picture Archive Council of America had asked the US Copyright Office to affirm the validity Corbis’s bulk registration process. The copyright office responded that it preferred–but did not require—registration applications to name all of the photographers.

Marc and David Meunsch cited that letter in support of their claim, but the court flatly rejected the Copyright Office’s interpretation of the registration requirements. “The interpretation [of the Copyright Office] conflict with a plain reading” of US Copyright statutes, the court said.

Corbis Director of Communications Dan Perlet says that “Corbis, PACA and others believe that this decision regarding the bulk registration process is incorrect and that it will be reargued, in which case Corbis will likely file an amicus brief supporting the bulk process.”

But he notes that Corbis has been listing the names of all photographers in its bulk registrations since February 2009—the month before the Muenchs filed their lawsuit. The Corbis bulk registrations since then aren’t affected by the Muench ruling, Perlet says.

For photographers who participated in the agency’s registration prior to that, “Corbis recommends that contributors wait to see the outcome of the appeal,” Perlet says. If the appeals are unsuccessful, he adds, then Corbis will go back and provide any supplementary information or re-register the images to make sure the registrations are valid.

Corbis has not said how many photographers—or images—are part of its bulk registration program.

Meanwhile, Advertising Photographers of America (APA)—which questioned the validity of Corbis’s bulk registrations several years ago—said in a press release yesterday,“[Corbis] ineffectually ‘registered’ an unknown large number of images that has resulted in a significant increase in vulnerability for photographers that have used this system through Corbis.”

APA added, “This emphasizes the importance of registering ones own images.”

May 7th, 2010

Ok, this is from that super-cheesy Cheezburger network but worth a look on a Friday. The blog is called "Ridiculous Poses" and it features photos of models in…wait for it…ridiculous poses.

Check out "Manicorn" below.

May 4, 2010

Hyper reality was the stuff of science fiction not so long ago. Now, many of us live there a good portion of the time through the screens of our computers, mobile devices, and TVs. The shift has had profound effects on our communications, on our relationships (with others, and with our environments), and on our cultural identity. That makes it a compelling photographic subject. But hyper reality is as invisible as the mind, and just as hard to photograph. So photographers look for inventive ways to capture telling glimpses, or otherwise depict our journeys into this parallel universe.

Evan Baden: "The Illuminati" 

Andrew Curtis: "Cell"

Kelly Shimoda: "I guess you don't want to talk to me anymore"

Gordon Blake: "Reality TV"

Robbie Cooper: "Immersion"

May 03, 2010

Update: LA Photographer Cleared of Criminal Charges

Los Angeles-based photographer Jonas Lara faces up to a year in prison if convicted of aiding and abetting two graffiti artists whose work he was documenting when the three men were arrested on February 2, 2010 in South Central Los Angeles.

Lara has declined two plea deals and has pleaded not guilty to the charge, believing that he was within his rights as a photographer to be at the scene documenting the work of the artists. However Lara says his public defender, David Gottesmann, has so far refused to consider his rights as a photographer as part of the defense. “Every time I bring [photographer’s rights or First Amendment rights] up, he just laughs at me,” Lara says.

Jeff Sedlik, Lara’s former teacher, has offered to testify on his behalf to establish his credibility as a photographer, but Lara says Gottesman insists that the case has nothing to do with Lara being a photographer.

Lara has appealed for help with the case to rights organization like the ACLU, but Lara says the organizations have told him they do not get involved in criminal cases.

If convicted, the Art Center College of Design graduate and former US Marine would be unable to enter the MFA program at the School of Visual Arts, into which he was recently accepted, in September.

Recognizing the need to hire a private attorney, Lara has established a legal fund to solicit help from friends, family and colleagues. Lara’s jury trial is scheduled for next Tuesday, May 11.

Lara’s camera, lenses and memory cards, which he uses to make a living, were also seized, and have not been returned to him.

When he was arrested, Lara was working on a long-term project for which he has documented the work and creative processes of 30 visual artists. Lara met the two graffiti artists at an abandoned building in South Central Los Angeles to photograph the pair as they worked on the illegal mural.

An LAPD helicopter spotted the group of three men and a patrol car was quickly on the scene. The artists attempted to walk away from the scene and were apprehended, Lara says. He remained at the scene and was arrested, although the arresting officers never let Lara know what he was being charged with.

The photographer says the officers were understanding when he explained his reason for being at the scene. They told him they needed to process him, and that he would be free to go in the morning. After advising Lara that it would be dangerous to leave his car in the neighborhood, one of the officers even drove Lara’s car to the police station so he could avoid a towing fee.

Once he got to the police station, however, Lara’s situation became much more precarious. The police held Lara for eight hours before telling him he was being charged with felony vandalism. He was held for 26 hours in total.

Two weeks after being bailed out by his wife, Lara was arraigned and the charge of felony vandalism was downgraded to a misdemeanor. At a pretrial hearing Gottesman told Lara that rather than vandalism, he was now being charged with damaging a fence at the scene. Then the charge was later switched again, this time to the misdemeanor of aiding and abetting. Prosecutors now claim Lara was acting as a lookout for the two graffiti artists.

Lara started his legal defense fund when it became clear to him that the charges against him would not be dropped. Those interested in donating to Lara’s legal defense fund can do so here:

Jonas Lara Legal Defense Fund Paypal Page.

Paypal payments can also be directed to donate@jonaslaradefensefund.org.

Posted by Conor Risch on May 3, 2010 at 2:29 PM

April 27, 2010

by David Walker

©DANIEL MOREL

It's hard to explain a mind-blowing mess like this one, but AFP is suing a Haitian photojournalist for "antagonistic assertion of [his] rights" after it distributed his news-breaking earthquake photos all over the world without his permission.

AFP is mad because the photographer, Daniel Morel, sent cease and desist letters to numerous AFP clients, allegedly made false and defamatory statements about AFP, and made unreasonable monetary demands of AFP for infringement.

AFP is asking a federal court in Manhattan to declare that it did nothing wrong, and force Morel to pay unspecified damages for defamation.

Morel, a veteran photojournalist and former AP photographer, was in Port au Prince when the earthquake struck. He shot news images moments after the quake, and within an hour, the daughter of a friend helped him post 13 high resolution images on Twitter from a hotel that still had a working internet connection.

AFP downloaded the images and distributed them through Getty, it's distribution partner. Morel's iconic image of an earthquake victim (shown above) appeared on the front pages of newspapers all over the world the next day. In many cases, the images carried the credit of AFP, Getty, and a Dominican photographer who stole Morel's images and re-tweeted them as his own. (Morel says AFP knew who the images actually belonged to, a claim AFP does not seem to be disputing).

Morel started sending the cease and desist letters to AFP and various users of Morel's images. AFP says it immediately stopped distributing his images. But the damage was done, and Morel has been seeking an unspecified payment from AFP.

AFP finally sued, asserting that the Twitter Terms of Service are perfectly clear: Anything uploaded to Twitter is free for re-distribution. Besides, AFP says, Morel didn't indicate that he was putting any restrictions on the use of the images that he tweeted.

Morel's response in court papers to that he "had no prior experience with Twitter…and did not read the Terms of Service." He also explains that he posted the images on Twitter with hopes that they "would span the globe to inform the world of the disaster, and that he would also receive compensation and credit as a professional photographer for breaking news of the earthquake before the news and wires services."

In a perfect world, photographers could take their stories to the world without major distributors and other middlemen, and somehow get paid–even after the fact–for pictures they have posted for all the world to see. 

In fact, The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, and others did see Morel's tweet and offer him money to publish and distribute his images, according to papers he filed in court. Not everyone, in other words, assumed that Morel's images were free for the taking because of Twitter's Terms of Service.

But a perfect world it isn't. The internet may be empowering, but this case shows how vulnerable photographers' copyrights are–and not just to petty thieves, but to big corporations who have the money and lawyers to beat small copyright owners up in court on the grounds that some fine print makes it legal to copy and distribute their works without permission.

That, of course, raises the question: what is copyright really worth anymore if technology has turned it into something that benefits only those with the resources to enforce and defend it at every turn?