Abstract
The artist, Shepard Fairey, has caused quite a dust-up in the worlds of copyright law and newspaper photographers. Fairey, it seems, used a photograph of Barrack Obama, taken by Associated Press photographer Mannie Garcia, as the basis for his Obama campaign HOPE and PROGRESS posters. The AP is said to have threatened a copyright infringement suit and Fairey, represented by a gaggle of Stamford University Law School pro bono lawyers, filed a preemptive action in New York seeking a ruling that his use of the Garcia photo was fair and not infringing. Not surprisingly, the AP countersued for copyright infringement.Fairey claims he used Garcia’s photo as a “visual reference”, and that he transformed the literal depiction contained in the Garcia photo into a “stunning, abstracted and idealized visual image that creates a powerful new meaning and conveys a radically different message that has no analogue in the [Garcia photo].” The AP asserts that Fairey’s work copied all of the distinctive elements of the photo in their entire detail – that the two works are essentially the same.
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