MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO

We will likely never know whether a monkey, put in a room with typewriter and given sufficient time, will actually type out Hamlet, but we do know now that a monkey given a camera can take a pretty good selfie. Wildlife photographer David Slater found this out when, during a shoot in Indonesia, a crested black macaque stole…

Read More

APPROPRIATION AND TRANSFORMATION

Patrick Cariou, a professional photographer, spent six years among the Rastafarians of Jamaica. and in 20oo he published a book of  portrait and landscape photographs taken during this sojourn.  Yes Rasta sold modestly, earning Cariou about $8,000 in royalties from sales of about 5700 copies. Four of those copies were purchased by appropriation artist Richard Prince. Prince, without…

Read More

SID & JOHNNY

Dennis Morris was a photographer who recorded the Sex Pistols’ legendary 1977 tours, capturing at least one iconic on-stage image of Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious.  Russell Young is an artist who found that image on the internet and used it, without Morris’s permission, in a series of Warhol-like pieces.  Morris v. Young, decided yesterday by Judge Gee of…

Read More