Joy Garnett is an artist who was making an exhibition called "The Riot Series." She looked online to find pictures of people in extreme emotional states and this Molotov Man was one of them. She didn't want the narrative of the story to be part of the exhibition so she just used the photos. For the Molotov man, she painted a large copy of the photograph. It became the face of the cards for the exhibition and so it became well known. One day she was contacted by the photographer's, Susan Meiselas, lawyer about the photo. They wanted Joy to give credit to Susan for the photo and to get permission from the photographer herself. Joy didn't want to get permission from Susan and so the lawyer said she owed $2,000.00. Joy decided to open her story to the public on a website that debates these sorts of situations. Soon she began to see that many people did appropriations of the Molotov Man, so it wasn't just herself.
The photographer of this image had a purpose much different than Joy for the photo. She took it in Nicaragua and it was a big moment in the history of Nicaragua. "The man is throwing a bomb at a Somoza national guard garrison, one of the last such garrisons remaining in Somoza's hands."(article) The picture was taken in 1979 and soon after the appropriations of the photo began.
The rest of the article just tells more history of the photo and the photographers experience with it.
I think the article is helpful because it shows what can happen with copyright infringement. It's also confusing where the line is drawn. I guess since Joy just painted a copy of the photo and didn't really appropriate it, it was an issue with copyright. Here is the original photograph and then the image that Joy found to paint off of:
hey, great job on responses and analysis. thank you good semester.
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