The POTUS, Shirtless and Photoshopped. Let the Arguments Begin!

Washington Monthly The Washingtonian has a new cover featuring the President of the United States shirtless. The web is abuzz. Is this the proper way to portray the nation's elected leader? But as this blogger points out, there is another issue: The image has been heavily manipulated. The cover is based on a paparazzi photo of then President-Elect Obama during his vacation in Hawaii in December. In the Washington Monthly Washingtonian version, the color of his swimming trunks has been changed, the background has been blacked out, and Obama's skin appears to be more golden in tone.
    So we have a couple of issues to debate.
    Should the magazine have used the picture? I do not see why not. The image speaks to a particular point: This politician is a new kind of celebrity. Some critics say that Washington Monthly the Washingtonian was pandering to the new administration. If so, it didn't behave any worse than all the magazines and newspapers that used to run those photo-op shots of President Bush in his cowboy hat "clearing brush."
    The manipulation I am not in favor of. It's one thing to make the point that President Obama is a celebrity, but quite another to treat images of him as if he were in the same magnitude of celebrity as Britney Spears.
    Memo to Self: That kind of trivialization should be avoided, no matter the temptation.
    Memo to President Obama: Stay off the Tonight Show, or this is what you'll get.
    Let's break this issue down even further, for the sake of discussion: What if the magazine had simply blacked out the backgorund and left his shorts and skin unretouched? I don't think I'd have much of a problem with it. (We've got to put cover lines somewhere!)  —David Schonauer

Eeeny-Meeny Chili-Beany: Best Ghost Photographs

May April Fool's Day is getting started early. This story lists the best photos of ghosts ever made. Ever since the medium of photography was invented, spiritual mediums have tried to put its supposed veracity to work in the hope of documenting the dear departed. Some of these attempts have become famous in ghost-hunting circles. The picture above, for instance, was made in 1966 by a retired clergyman in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. Said clergyman was simply shooting the staircase, but when his film was developed, a spectral apparition was apparent. According to legend, experts from Kodak examined the negative and found that it hadn't been tampered with. Please vote: Real ghost, or hoax? Any other good ghost photos I should know about?--David Schonauer

Associated Press vs Shepard Fairey, Round 3

Or is it Round 4? It don't know anymore. As you will recall, the Associated Press came after guerilla artist Shepard Fairey (above), who based his now-famous Barack Obama "Hope" poster on a photo made by AP photographer Mannie Garcia. AP claimed there was copyright infringement and wanted to share some of the estimated $400,000 that Fairey has made from the poster.
    Fairey and his lawyers figured that the best defense is a good offense, so they sued AP, hoping for judgment from the courts that he not infringe on any copyright and in any case is protected by the Fair Use Doctrine, which allows the use of copyrighted material for specific reasons such as commentary or criticism.
    Now AP has countersued Fairey, saying his use of copyrighted material is a threat to journalism.
    The photographer who made the picture has had his own beef with AP.
    I still can't see way that AP can come out on top of this. As I have noted previously, American Photo contacted an expert in the coyright field, who wondered whether there were any genuine copyrightable elements in the original photograph. As she noted, someone's expression in a photo is not copyrightable. Furthermore, Fairey did significantly alter the original photo, and his usage would seem to fall under the idea of fair use.
    But I'm not a lawyer. Maybe a settlement is in order.--David Schonauer

Does Photo Reouching Ruin Lives?

The website of the New York Times has a video opinion piece concerning the effects that retouched photographs have on women's body image that is worth taking a look at. There are some interesting interviews with digital retouchers, who seem to agree that the work they do promotes false ideas about physical perfect. It's probably not news to the readers of a photography blog that essentially every image in every fashion or celebrity magazine is retouched. Should there be a law against such practices? (The video piece begins by noting that in France such laws have been considered.) Should magazines have to tell readers which images have been retouched? One solution mentioned in the piece is that magazines should include the names of retouchers in its photo credits. I know plenty of retouchers who would love to get credit alongside the photographers who take the pictures--and plenty of photographers who would hate that. But maybe that is the solution. Thoughts? --David Schonauer

SI Model "Porn" on Southwest Airlines?

If you fly on Southwest Airlines, perhaps you've seen the planes with the picture of 2009 Sports Illustrusted Swimsuit Issue cover girl Bar Rafaeli painted on the side. Even if you are earthbound, you may have read reports about the latest aggressive marketing project. The airline has a lighter-than-air approach to entertaining it customers, who, buy and large, seem  to enjoy the effort. However, I could have warned Southest executives that they'd get letters about the picture of Rafaeli. This report doesn't say how many letters and emails the airline received, but it quotes a Southwest spokesman who said about a quarter of the responses were negative. That includes the letter from one offended person who said his plane looked like "flying porn."  Another person called the plane "tacky."
     The story is an interesting starting point for a discussion. I don't think the picture on the Southwest plane is pornographic. I understand that some people might. You are invited to state your opinion here.
     The discussion is important, I think, because it helps us all understand what kinds of public imagery most people consider acceptable. It's easy to fire off a letter accusing someone of promoting pornography. (As the editor of a photo magazine,I've gotten plenty of those notes. They all seem to begin, "If I'd wanted a porn magazine, I'd have bought Playboy, not American Photo.") That probably why I'm sensitive when people play the porno card.
    My point here is that there a big space between "tacky" and "pornographic." Is the SI image tacky? Yeah, I think so, in the context of this use on an airplane. For me, basically any ad painted on the side of a commercial airplane would be fairly tacky. (Would it be any better if Southwest had painted an ad for Imodium or Cialis on its plane?) Hyperbole doesn't help the discussion.--David Schonauer

      
    

Does Associated Press Deserve Money for Appropriated Obama Image?

The Associated Press is ready to go to battle against Shepard Fairey, the aritst who created the poster of Barack Obama that because famous during last year's presidential campaign. Fairey has admitted that he based his artwork on an image by AP photographer Mannie Garcia, who photographed then-Senator Obama at the National Press Club in 2006. AP claims copyright infringement, and it wants compensation. Let the debate begin.
     I imagine that many photographers are rooting for AP and the sanctity of copyright protection. But I am not sure that AP will win this case. The agency has some legal hurdles to jump. According to one expert we asked, Fairey's appropriation of the photographic image would probably be allowed under the doctrine of Fair Use, which allows use of copyrighted material for specific reasons such as scholarship or review.
    But even if the Fair Use Doctrine didn't apply, there are other issues facing AP. The expert we contacted wonders how much of the Garcia image contains "copyrightable elements." AP can't copyright Obama's face or expression, and the image was a studio shot featuring specialized lighting.
    Your thoughts?--David Schonauer

News Alert: Fashion Mag Photoshops Cover Image!

A new documentary screened at the Sundance Film Festival has an explosive revelation: Vogue magazine drastically maniuplated a photo of actress Sienna Miller for the cover of its September 2007 issue.
    The film, called simply "The September Issue," reveals that a shot of Miller's head was attached to a different shot of her body.
    the whole blogosphere is going to erupt over this...partly because everyone is looking for some piece of news to come out of Sundance, and partly because it's sort of open season on Vogue editor Anna Wintour, and partly because Perez Hilton always puts down Miller. (In the film, Wintour apparently says Miller is "toothy.") And it's always fun to call out magazines over retouching.
    But of course we all know that all the fashion magazines do this. Let me suggest that attaching heads from one shot bodies in another is just sort of standard practice nowadays. Fashion is about fantasy, not reality.--David Schonauer

Should the Guy Who Shot this Photo Get Fired?

Apparently I wasn't the only one who was amused to see this picture of a skier in Vale, Colorado. It was taken by Marty Odem, a photographer who works for a company that makes shots of skiers at the Vail Mountain ski lifts--those little souvenir shots that everyone loves. Odem caught this poor ski as he slipped and was luckily secured to the lift by his own pants. Less luckily, for him at least, was that his privates were exposed. Odem's photo was a sensation on the internet.
    Now Odem fears that he will be fired from his job. The company he works for has already suspended him for invading the privacy of the man in the picture. Odem says he was shooting on his day off and shooting with his own camera.
    Does he deserve to be unemployed? --David Schonauer

OJ Simpson, Then and Now

For a while I thought it would be fun to collect police mug shots of famous people who'd gone to jail. I gave up on the idea, but I do think there is almost perfect about mugshots. They  are visual documentation stripped down to its barest form. It's fun to arrange mug shots in a grid, the way Bernd and Hilla Becher arranged their plain images of factories and water towers, to create a kind of typology of burned-out celebrities.
     In the case of OJ Simpson, we can also look at the passage of time, captured in still pictures. The mugshot at left from made famous after his arrest for murder in the 1994. The mug shot at right is from his most recent arrest, for kidnapping and other crimes.--David Schonauer

Edit Agreement for Jolie Baby Photos?

The New York Times is reporting that People magazine paid more than cash for first rights to photos of Angelina Jolie's new set of twins. It has previously been reported that People paid $14 million for the photos of  Vivienne Marcheline and Knox Leon, the latest addition to the family of Jolie and husband Brad Pitt. But the Times says the contract also called for People to "offer coverage that would not reflect negatively on [Jolie] or her family."
    A spokesman for the magazine denied the claim.
    There are a lot of aspects to this story that bother me. If the claim by the Times is true, I would like to heartily condemn People for selling out its sense of journalistic authority. But I'm informed enough to know that this kind of agreement is nothing new. Promises get made. (Including them in contracts would be a new twist, however.) The bottom line is this: $14 million for baby pictures? This is out of control.