artistsobservation

He can try to justify his actions all he wants. He is a plagiarist. I had been a fan. For almost a decade, I’ve followed and supported Shep’s career. From the Obey stickers (which were the first round of copyright infringement), through the Mountain Dew logo, and then now the Obama Progress/Hope poster. I even went as far as buying my Progress shirt to support the Obama cause and to support SF’s work.

Never again. I feel like he personally screwed me over. I have had work stolen. Blatantly stolen, and marketed as someone’s elses and never received any payment/compensation. So to me, it’s personal.

Shepard Fairey claims that the AP photo he used was public domain. NOT. I worked for a newspaper, we had (paid for) a AP wire subscription. Not only did we pay for the use of the images, there were rules/guidelines for the usage. He says he usually just uses Google image to acquire images for “his” work. (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9652OD01&show_article=1&catnum=8)

Even if, I repeat, even if he was legal in the right regarding his acquistion of the Obama image, how can he claim ownership to the image. The original image was taken by a professional photographer. The photographer composed the image, composed, framed his subject, considered lighting situation, and worked out the technical aspects of his hardware and took the shot. End of story.

What did Shepard do to make it his own? Used photoshop to turn it to high contrast and then used the paint bucket to fill in the pre-existing shapes. Kind of like a glorified color by number. OOoooo genius, right?

Okay, so let’s say we give him the Obama poster. Explain away all the other examples found in this article.
http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm

There are so many examples of plagiarism, he can’t. He’s lost my respect. He’s a freakin’ cheat. And don’t try to say he’s making a statement or that he’s a rule breaker and all great artists are rule breakers. Maybe, but not as plagiarist.

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