In a pre-emptive strike, the street artist Shepard Fairey filed a lawsuit on Monday against The Associated Press, asking a federal judge to declare that he is protected from copyright infringement claims in his use of a news photograph as the basis for a now ubiquitous campaign poster image of President Obama. NYT | related
“If you put all the legal stuff away, I’m so proud of the photograph and that Fairey did what he did artistically with it, and the effect it’s had.”
-Mannie Garcia, Freelance Photographer
3 Comments
I have been a fan of Fairey for years,since theobeygiant.com and i guess the old saying is true any publicity is good publicity. This lawsuit makes it to big news eventually he will be reaping the benefits of this image for the rest of his life.
Not a fan of this street garbage. This poster of obama is a graphic one-liner like most of the other work, pure commercialism in the guise of revolution-"inspired" visuals. That he had the audacity to sue the A.P. for an image that he blatantly stole and manipulated to his liking, and expects not to be nailed for it, is laughable. That any individual who seeks to profit off of another's work without due credit, including the use of the Andre the Giant image for a joke, should get his. If I were Mannie Garcia, I would say, you did not ask to use my image, you used it for your own purpose, got fame from it, and now you want to discredit me for my work, as well as offer some pittance sum to some phoney baloney charity, c'mon, do you think i am an idiot? let us see how the lawyer weasels hired by fairy try to talk their way out of this scenario. perhaps using the words "inspired by" or some such loophole. he should be jailed for the visual rubbish that his work pollutes the world with, and forced to personally scrape it off with his own money and time.
You make a good argument, but the fact of the matter is that he will get rich off of this. I understand you may not like some of Fairey's work but it does change the fact that he is a Living Legend in Street art. A Pioneer, and will be immortalized by his work..
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