Friday, March 5, 2010

Photographer Claiming Copyright - How to Prevent

Quilts, Photographs and Galleries - Paul Sugden - This article was written for The Australian Forum for Textile Arts. In it, Sugden discusses an issue that arose with a photographer who was hired by a gallery to take photos of an exhibit. The photographer susequently published the photos of the quilter's artwork on his own website, claiming he had copyright of the photos.

Sugden provides a clause that artists should require to be inserted in any contract that a gallery or other venue has with a photographer. NOTE: artists could also amend it for insertion in the general publicity permission statement they sign with venues for exhibitions.
http://www.tafta.org.au/Pauls_work/PS_84.html

2 comments:

judibel said...

This is very interesting. It was always my understanding that any work (design, art, photography) you do for a company, etc. is the property of the employer. But I will keep the article and use it in future just to be safe.

Gwen Magee (Gwendolyn) said...

Hi Judith,

I think this is an area that can be very muddy and having it clearly defined is always best. You know what they say about assumptions (smile).

I have personally been in a position (back in the "olden" days of slides) where where I actually had to get a release form from the photographer before I could get copies of the slides made of my own work - he had a copyright on the slide frame. I must note, though that he had photographed the work for free.

Nonetheless, I learned from that experience and have never allowed it to happen again. Had not thought about exhibit publicity photos however.

Gwen