Interesting People mailing list archives
National Constitution Center Reponse Re Ban on Photography
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 06:10:00 -0500
Begin forwarded message: From: Stanton McCandlish <mech () well com> Date: December 2, 2004 5:27:33 AM EST To: David Farber <dave () farber net>Subject: Re: [IP] National Constitution Center Reponse Re Ban on Photography
From: Jim Zellmer <zellmer () virtualproperties com>
and/or
From: Michael Ravnitzky <mikerav () mindspring com>
[sorry, the attribution was a little hard to follow.]
Date: December 1, 2004 6:55:54 PM EST To: FOI-L () LISTSERV SYR EDU Subject: National Constitution Center Reponse Re Ban on Photography It is true that we cannot permit any kind of photography in the exhibit halls, with the exception of Signer's Hall. The reason for this is thatwe do not own most of artifacts that are on display. They are on loan tous, and the lenders strictly prohibit photographs being taken for their own rights and protection. (In a few cases, it is a matter of the flash being harmful to the artifacts, but in most, it is not, which is why even non-flash photos are prohibited.)
[...]
Director of Public Relations National Constitution Center
This doesn't surprise me at all. Most of the stuff in museums isn't actually owned by them, and the photo/publication rights to them can theoretically be pretty lucrative, leading most actual owners to be restrictive. I caught all kinds of hell on the Isle of Man, that interesting Gaelic-Nordic quasi-sovereign island between Ireland and Scotland, trying to take photos (no flash involved) of some very specific pieces of the art on exhibit - heck, really just detail areas of them. Hhere's the rub: prints of them, at any cost, weren't sold by the museum or anyone else as far as I've been able to determine, even more than a decade later. Namely Archibald Knox's works. (Unless you are even weirder than I am, you would not recognize that name. Think Alphonse Mucha's Art Nouveau, in execution, meets thickly "Celtic Twilight"-period William Butler Yeats, in inspiration, and you have *some* idea. Really beautiful, fantastical stuff, even if it was cheesy on one level or another.) The museum did have a little 30-page magazine-like "book" of his stuff, but almost nothing in that booklet coincided with what was on the walls. Eventually I found someone that worked at the Isle of Man national museum [exact name of the institution escapes me, sorry; that was 13 years ago] who allowed me to take a FEW pictures - NO FLASH! - as long as I FIRST bought the pre-packaged retrospective "book" they were selling (and from which royalties were of course being paid). And I practically had to swear upon the lives of my as yet unborn children that I wasn't taking pictures for commercial purposes. Ireland was far less flexible. I had precisely the same, and ultimately worse, problem when it came to the museum-hung works of another artist in a similar vein, in the Republic of Éire. I cannot to this day remember his name (and <ahem> don't have any pics to work with to figure that out). His style was so undeniably influential of [upon? I'm not sure what preposition to use here] the works of globally famed Celtic-fantasy artist Jim FitzPatrick that I just HAD to take pictures of some of his works, in particular details of a few paintings that were very clearly so directly inspirational of several of FitzPatrick's works, it was almost uncanny. I hadn't even gotten in a stable position to take a photo before I was seized upon by museum rentacops. I was almost *pounced* upon by them. And - here's the rub - the institution in question didn't even sell their own (or anyone else's) books, or even overpriced prints, of the works in question. They were ultimately just *off limits* to anything but my own hardly eidetic memory. I don't blame either of the museums for this. It wasn't really their idea or policy; it was dictated to them by the people who nominally owned the works in question. I think it really comes down to yet another excessive overextension of the intellectual property legal fiction. Here's stuff you can LOOK at all you want, EVERY single day for the rest of your life - you can literally bring an easel and sit there and practice painting copies of them! - until you have memorized every single brushstroke and could probably paint a totally convincing forgery of it; but you're going *straight to Hell* if you even think about taking a picture of a corner of it for research or even just plain personal interest reasons. Because SOMEONE somewhere might actually pay some probably piddly amount to take pictures of it for a dry art history book, than none of us would actually buy anyway. Pfah. All I have to say in the end is more power to the people making miniaturized photographic equipment. I'd love to have even a 640x480 grainy picture of some of that art, even just particular details of it. And the tech that's already available now could have produced far better that 5 640x480 pics, with an easily-concealable handheld equipment size. Too bad I was playing art-tourist in 1991 instead of 2004. My camera was a huge 2lb Nikon SLR monstrosity with a fat macro lens attachment on it. I didn't stand a chance. I was probably more obvious than someone trying to light the paintings on fire. At least a Zippo is palm-concealable. Basically, I think the situation is stupid and pathetic. I will have no ethical or other qualms about using a phonecam or other less-than-blatantly-obvious cameratic technology to capture images of much of anything henceforth. If I'm allowed to look at it, I should be allowed to look at it again later on my own time, thank you. If I tried to SELL pictures of it, different story. I don't think I-P rights are utterly void, after all. I just think they need to have some limitations. Like the ones they had when they were invented out of thin air and forced on everyone in the first place, before Disney and Hollywood-at-large (not to mention the New York and London print publishing realms, et al.) quietly lobbied them into perpetual and forceful permanency. ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- National Constitution Center Reponse Re Ban on Photography David Farber (Dec 01)
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- National Constitution Center Reponse Re Ban on Photography David Farber (Dec 02)