owning the man…or not?

10Dec07

Just imagine this. You’re doing your job. You create something. Someone else DIRECTLY copies off of you. A couple hundred thousand dollars (or maybe even a million or so) later you don’t even see a penny of the profit.

That’s the basic gist behind the Richard Price/Jim Krantz controversy that the NY Times, among others, reported a few days ago. It has been fairly publicized so I won’t go into details, but basically Krantz, a commercial photographer, was at the Guggenheim in New York where Prince’s retrospective is ongoing. He sees his Marlboro Man image reproduced. Prince’s reputation has skyrocketed to such an extent that in 2005 one of the Marlboro images went for 1.2 million dollars.

An ad or a work of art? You decide.

Yes, Krantz is a commercial photographer and basically sells away his rights to the images. That’s the deal. Yet still, isn’t it similar to transcribing Moby Dick word for word and then publishing it under another name? I know that Melville’s motives were a bit different from someone producing stock footage/writing, but fundamentally, we all know that’s wrong.

Prince is also notorious for his “take” on a Garry Gross photo shoot with a young Brooke Shields. Culture Grrl tells this tale.

I do not write this to denounce Prince and his “artistic vision,” however I’m not so sure that I agree with his methods. This is a sensitive matter. When I first took photography nine years ago in high school, this is one of the first issues that came up in discussion. Beyond actually photographing another work, we spoke about making the kisses of Eisenstaedt and Doisneau. It’s about the intention. They both claimed to have captured the decisive moment, yet this remains uncertain.

I also think of Walker Evans and his photograph of a torn movie poster. Evans was a sign man from rusted road signs to indirect social and cultural signifiers. Despite often reproducing an already produced image, Evans used his photography as a social commentary. Reframing the image, he defined his own point of view.

The same can be said for Prince, although his images are direct replicas. They are as if he printed a duplicate from the original negative. Where’s the satisfaction in making a color copy? Perhaps in the bank.

Filed under: Art-sy News   |  3 Comments
Tags: art, copy, Jim Krantz, Marlboro Man, method, photography, Richard Prince