You’re referring to this post wherein I reblog the work of a photographer from the Pacific Northwest who goes by the alias f2.8 mentioning that I went against his stated wishes that content not reblogged with any additions or deletions.
Subsequently, you implicitly refer to another post wherein I take photographer Art Shay to task for taking a nude photo of Simone de Beauvoir without her explicit consent of the subject.
Then by virtue of the transitive property you suggest that I’m contradicting myself.
I’m not sure if you’re being disingenuous or if you really don’t see the category mistake you’re making in your inquiry. I’ll assume the latter.
Consent between a photographer or image maker and a subject is not one size fits all. I was referring specifically to consent in the context of the relationship between a photographer or image maker in the context of nude photography. (Also, I would point out that from the standpoint of Art History, the lack of consent has sort of been the sacrosanct point of street photography. I have mixed feelings on this topic, which I’ve discussed in passing here.)
The relationship between the artist and audience does not enjoy the same dynamic as the relationship between image maker or photographer and subject. To follow this path is a little like arguing that since racism and sexism are both forms of oppression that they must operate with identical mechanism. (Spoiler alert: they don’t.)
I have a great deal of empathy for artists who put work out there and have it work stripped of credit, turned into perverse vehicles for expressing personal fantasies and/or appropriated for self-promotion. In a perfect world, Tumblr would do far more than they do to support creators.
I’ve posted previously about my thoughts on this and I’m linking it here because it very much relates to this conversation. I hard core support responsible Tumblr-ing. But I do start to take issues when creators get pissy about the format of their attribution. From the standpoint of curation, the minimum shoudl be artist, title of work, date of creation and link to artist’s primary website. No self-respecting gallery is going to include your formatted links to Instagram and your personal website. It’s an act of hubris that anyone expects that.
I’m conflicted when it comes to anything beyond that. If it’s an artist statement, I tend to err on the side of including that whenever possible. I try to respect the context of the work. (And I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t always get it right.)
However, I take issue with lazy artists who try to keep an ironclad grasp on their work once they’ve released it into the world. I do think artist’s deserve recognition for their work but I object to anyone who makes work primarily for recognition–in my experience these are the same types who like to argue about creatorial intentionality and other pretentious, meaningless BS. (One of the prerequisites for understanding is the ability to be misunderstood. Any misunderstanding is just as much a part of the work as any understanding.)
My justification for posting the image by f2.8 was in good faith. I like the image and as I said wanted to celebrate it and point followers in the direction of his work. I don’t always succeed but the point of this project is to introduce people to art that matters to me. And while I don’t think f2.8 doesn’t want people to like his work, I do think his stance is misguided in that it centralizes the ability to meaningfully connect with work entered into the public circulation solely through the mandate of the author. If I’d obeyed that I wouldn’t have been able to post the image here to point people in his direction. So I did what I did in good faith. If the artist feels my endeavors we’re in bad faith, I’ll respect his wishes and remove the image.
Acetylene Eyes 