The Shepard Fairey-AP case: A clearer picture -- latimes.com

• The Shepard Fairey-AP case: A clearer picture -- latimes.com

  tags: copyright

  • Shepard Fairey, a Los Angeles-based "street artist," has made a career out of recycling other people's images. His admirers say he uses familiar visual icons as a vehicle for political and cultural commentary, often in an arresting and subversive way. His critics cast his efforts in a more negative light, accusing him of blatantly plagiarizing images created by other artists, giving them neither credit nor royalties from the sales of his posters and other merchandise.
    
    Fairey is now embroiled in a legal battle with the Associated Press over what are undoubtedly his best-known works of art to date: the "Hope," "Change" and "Progress" posters he produced last year to support Barack Obama's presidential campaign. The popular images were unmistakably drawn from a picture that AP contract photographer Mannie Garcia took of Obama at a National Press Club event in 2006. But Fairey used just a tracing of Obama from the initial shot, filling it in with broad strokes of color. The result conveys something much different from the photograph: hero worship, in the fashion of mid-20th century propaganda posters. Fairey claimed in federal court that he made a "fair use" of the photo and therefore wasn't bound by the AP's copyrights; the AP countersued, saying he infringed and must pay damages.