By Holly Stuart Hughes

Andreas Gursky’s “Rhein II” sold for $4,338,500 at an auction of contemporary art at Christie’s auction house in New York on November 8, making it the most expensive photo sold at auction. This is the second time a Gursky print has held this distinction. His 2001 photo “99 Cent II Diptychon” sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $3,346,456 in 2007, and was only displaced in May 2011, when a 1981 Cindy Sherman self-portrait sold for $3,890,500 at Christie’s. The buyer of “Rhein II” is unknown.

“Rhein II,” a signed chromogenic print in an edition of six, is digitally retouched to show the banks of Germany’s Rhine River as bare stretches of green. Prior to the sale, the auction house estimated that the print would sell for between $2,5 million and $3.5 million. According to Christie’s, other prints in the edition are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, Munich’s Pinakothek der Modern, and the Glenstone Collection in Potomac, Maryland.

Like most of Gursky’s works, “Rhein II” is big: 143 inches by 73 inches. It’s also face-mounted to Plexiglas, a process that some collectors have feared could cause conservation issues, such as warping or deterioration of the image, depending on the chemicals used during mounting.  

According to the Guardian newspaper, Gursky considers the bleak landscapes one of his favorite photos. “For me it is an allegorical picture about the meaning of life and how things are.”

Some reporters and critics were more skeptical. In a post titled “Here’s the world’s most expensive (and boring?) photo,” a writer at the Seattle Post Intelligencer joked, “One can only assume the collector really likes stripes of green and gray.”

Related Stories:

Living Large: How To Print for Maximum Impact

by David Walker dwalker100@comcast.net

Who’s Shooting What is a PDNonline.com feature that highlights recent photo assignment work of note–particularly advertising assignment work. To be considered for a mention in Who’s Shooting What, please e-mail executive editor David Walker at dwalker100@comcast.net. PLEASE INCLUDE all of the following information that is applicable:

Photographer: (Name AND Location)
Client: (company, brand, product)
Brief description: (what was the assignment, and how will the images be used?)
Agency: (full name and location, eg “BBDO Atlanta” or “Agent16 New York”)
Creative director:
Art director:
Art buyer:
Rep:

Please attach one or two lo-res images (at least 140 pixels wide) in JPG or PDF format.    

By Conor Risch

Stephen Ferry has received the first-ever Tim Hetherington Grant, it was announced this morning. The grant was established to honor Hetherington, the photographer and filmmaker who was killed in Libya in April, 2011, and is administered by World Press Photo and Human Rights Watch with the support of Hetherington’s parents.

Ferry received the grant €20,000 (US $27,500) in recognition of his longterm project “Violentology: A Manual of the Colombian Conflict,” which examines Colombia’s decades-long guerrilla war. After moving to Colombia and working for ten years, Ferry will now distribute the project via an exhibition, book publication, and by making certain chapters of the book available free of charge as PDF booklets.

Judges for the grant included Christopher Anderson, Magnum photographer; James Brabazon, journalist and documentary filmmaker; Veronica Matushaj, Human Rights Watch director of photography; Michiel Munneke, managing director World Press Photo; and Jamie Wellford, senior photo editor Newsweek. Adriaan Monshouwer, founder of Picture Inside, served as secretary during the selection process.

According to a statement by World Press Photo and Human Rights Watch, “the selection committee was looking for qualities that also defined Hetherington’s career: work that operates on multiple platforms and in a variety of formats; that crosses boundaries between breaking news and long-term investigation; and that demonstrates a consistent moral commitment to the lives and stories of the photographic subjects.”

“Ferry is not only committed to creating an important historical record,” the Judges commented, “He is also generating innovative approaches for disseminating that record within the community he documents, as well as to a worldwide audience.”

Ferry was selected for the grant from a pool of 222 applicants representing 56 nationalities.

Related: Aftermath Project Announces Winners of Special Grant

by David Walker

A California-based entertainment photographer has won a $7,500 court judgment against entertainment photo agency Picture Group and its owner, Frank Micelotta, for unpaid royalties. The judgment was handed down October 31 in small claims court in Beverly Hills.

Photographer Kristian Dowling said in court papers dated September 14, 2011 that Micelotta owed him more than $14,000 in image licensing fees. But $7,500 is the maximum amount that a plaintiff can recover in a small claims court.

“The reason I took it to small claims court is because I couldn’t afford to sue him” for the full amount in a state civil claims court, Dowling told PDN.

Micelotta paid Dowling about $5,500 in late October, and promised to pay the rest of the money in four monthly installments. But Dowling pressed his legal claim because Micelotta reneged on an agreement to pay about $7,000 instead of $5,500, according to Dowling.

Micelotta said he and Dowling had a misunderstanding about their agreement over the amount of the October payment. Micelotta accuses Dowling of “looking for a scapegoat” and says that his actions cast Picture Group in an unfair light.

Micelotta admitted in court that he still owed Dowling about $9,000, and said he intended to pay the money. The judge encouraged Dowling to settle with Micelotta for the full debt. But Dowling insisted on the $7,500 judgment instead because he didn’t trust Micelotta to live up to another out-of-court agreement.

Dowling says he managed to get Micelotta to pay him a portion of the $14,500 only because Micelotta wanted Dowling to return a 300 mm lens that belonged to Picture Group. Otherwise, Dowling says, “He doesn’t return phone calls. He doesn’t put stuff in writing. All he ever says is, ‘Let’s work it out. We’ll work it out.’”

Micelotta says he pays his photographers “for everything they do,” and that he intends to pay Dowling the full amount that he’s owed. “He wanted a judgment so he could send you a story and hurt our business,” Micelotta says. “He wanted this so he could put it on Facebook and claim victory to all his friends.”

Micelotta says he has paid Dowling a total of $101,838 for Picture Group assignments in the last 20 months, plus the $5,000 at the end of October “but that wasn’t good enough because he has another agenda.”

“There’s a lot of financial improprieties I could tell you about with him. But that’s not my style. I’m not trying to drag this guy through the dirt. He’s made some really poor decisions,” Micelotta says. He goes on to allege several examples and then says, “He’s taking his problems out on us.”

Dowling responds, “I don’t blame Frank for me not having money. I blame him for not paying me. This isn’t about me and my sob story. It’s about someone taking advantage of desperate photographers and new photographers who don’t know any better.”

He adds, “We need photographers to understand that they aren’t going to get their money.”

Dowling acknowledges that he has been paid a total of at least $85,000 for assignments from Picture Group. What he wasn’t paid, he says, were the royalties he was also owed for sales of his image.

Picture Group offers to pay photographers royalties in addition to assignment fees. But according to Dowling, the agency often withholds royalty statements–and royalty payments–from photographers. Dowling also believes that Picture Group manipulates sales statements. “What I had in the royalty statements was probably 20 percent of what he [Micelotta] owes me,” Dowling asserts.

One of the agency’s former contributors, Mychal Watts of Philadelphia, says Picture Group owes him about $1,500. “He [Micelotta] never returned my calls,” Watts says. “I got tired of waiting to get paid.”
 
New York photographer Shareif Ziyadat says he started shooting for Picture Group in November, 2010, but stopped taking assignments three or four months ago. “I never received a sales sheet [report]. Every time I talked to them about it nothing was ever done,” says Ziyadat, who still doesn’t know what he’s owed. “I was getting the run around. I haven’t received any payments.”

Other photographers contacted for this story did not return calls, and two Picture Group contributors declined to talk because they are holding out hope that they will eventually be paid. “I’m basically trying to get paid for what’s owed and I think it’s in my interest to just kind of lay low,” says one.

Micelotta says, “We have no reason (to manipulate sales reports.) We’re not hiding anything. We have a little catching up to do, but what small agency doesn’t?”

He continues, “It’s a tough time in the photo industry. We’re behind in paying some people. We’re not refusing to pay anyone.”

Part of the problem, Micelotta explains, is that some of his clients haven’t paid money they’ve owed since July or even earlier. “Cash flow is critical,” he says, adding that delayed payments are “unavoidable a couple of times a year.”

Asked whether Picture Group was in danger of going bankrupt, Micelotta says, “Absolutely not. We’re not in danger. We have a very good business.”

But he also says he’s going to change Picture Group’s payment structure because “it’s not feasible economically any longer” to pay royalties in addition to assignment fees. So Micelotta plans to pay flat fee “buyouts” for assignments instead, like his competitors are doing already, he says.

And meanwhile, he says he’s “working hard to bring extra capital into the company. We’re working with a few investors and a business partner. That’s all going to happen in the next few weeks. So it kills me that this is being talked about now, right at the time when we’re going to turn things around and get all these photographers paid.”

Even Dowling will get the full amount that he’s owed, not just the $7,500 that the small claims court ordered Picture Group to pay, Micelotta pledges.

But Dowling is convinced his court order is worth no more than the paper it’s printed on. “[Micelotta's] not going to pay it,” he says.

by David Walker

A flurry of recent copyright claims against TV networks for unauthorized use of still photographs raises an obvious question: Why are media corporations with a self-interest in protecting the principles of copyright so reckless with the copyrights of others? Is it a matter of business expedience—i.e., fighting lawsuits is easier and cheaper than purchasing licenses? Is Big Media giving in to the “information wants to be free” anarchy?

At least three new claims were filed in July. New York photographer Delphine Fawundu Buford filed suit on July 22 in New York federal court against Fox News for airing her copyrighted photo of Assata Shakur, a former Black Panther who was convicted of murdering a New Jersey state police officer in 1973. Shakur escaped from prison in 1979 and fled to Cuba.

Fox commentator Bill O’Reilly displayed Buford’s photo without permission on his popular TV program, The O’Reilly Factor, when he was criticizing President Obama for inviting hip-hop artist Common to the White House. The connection? Common is a supporter of Shakur, according to O’Reilly.

According to Buford’s complaint, Fox flouted her copyright because they were anxious to distribute the image as quickly as possible “for the sole purpose of ‘beating’ [the] competition.” Buford is seeking both actual and statutory damages.

In another lawsuit filed July 29 in a St. Louis federal court, Missouri photographer Marcie Cobbaert has charged that the Lifetime and AE television networks used at least four of her photographs on the Web site for the reality TV show Project Runway, which appears on Lifetime, without permission. Lifetime allegedly attached its own credit to the images. Cobbaert had photographed various fashion designs by Laura Kathleen Planck, who became a contestant on Project Runway and provided Cobbaert’s images to the show. Planck is also named as a defendant. Cobbaert is seeking unspecified damages for infringement of her copyrights.

Meanwhile, Michael Eastman has also filed suit in federal court in St. Louis against NBC Universal Media, Bravo Media, Warner Brothers and others for the unauthorized use of one of his copyrighted images on Bravo Network’s Million Dollar Decorators program. He’s not claiming outright theft, though: Million Dollar Decorator’s producers sought—and got—Eastman’s permission to broadcast one of his images of a dilapidated Havana ballroom. But Eastman claims he was intentionally misled to believe he was approving the display of an original, limited-edition black-and-white print of modest dimensions that the show’s producer had acquired from an art dealer. Instead, Bravo producers enlarged the image to create a “floor-to-ceiling [color] ‘mural’ of inferior quality” and broadcast it “worldwide.”

“But for Defendants’ fraud, Mr. Eastman would have never signed the Clearance Agreement” granting permission to display the photograph,” his claim asserts. He is seeking actual damages—which he estimates at $75,000—as well as statutory damages.

Three claims in quick succession could be dismissed as a coincidence, but there have been others that suggest that something more than coincidence is at play.

Tucson photographer Jon Wolff’s images of a nine-year-old girl who died in the shootings in Tucson last January 8 were widely used without permission by print, Web and TV stations without permission. When Wolff demanded payment, then threatened to sue, the perception was that he was trying to profit from a tragedy. He was vilified, and didn’t sue because of public pressure against him. But news organizations had trampled his copyrights nonetheless.

Bay Area photographer Ken Light lost his claim against Al Gore’s Current TV network after it allegedly used Light’s image of a Texas death row inmate on its Web site without permission. Because he wasn’t up for an expensive, time consuming copyright battle in federal court, Light tried suing Current TV in small claims court on state law violations. Current TV bombarded the state court with technical and legal defenses. The judge threw the case out without explanation. Light wasn’t able to pursue his claims in federal court, so Current TV—which probably spent more in legal fees to fight Light’s claim than it would have had to pay him for an image license up front—stands effectively absolved of any theft.

Meanwhile, freelance journalist Jason DeCesare of Philadelphia has sued CBS, NBC, Fox, Disney and Comcast for unauthorized used of his images of a local TV newscaster named Larry Mendte. DeCesare had photographed and interviewed Mendte, who was caught up in an e-mail hacking scandal involving a co-worker, for a publication called Phillyist. He also posted the images on his Flickr page.

“A couple of years passed, and I totally forgot about it,” DeCesare says. Then one night he saw a commentary on Mendte’s case on a local TV station. He Googled Mendte’s name, and found his images all over the Web on sites owned by major networks, as well as in clips of local TV broadcasts that appeared on YouTube. He believes the images were lifted from his Flickr site.

He has already settled for an undisclosed sum with TheInsider.com, a Web subsidiary of CBS. His claims against NBC, Fox, Comcast and Disney (owners of ABC, which allegedly used his images) are still pending. As we talked, he was Googling his images—and discovering new infringements that he was anxious to report to his lawyer.

DeCesare surmises that the infringements are a matter of corporate expediency, not policy.

“You have some low paid intern who does a Google search to find an image, and doesn’t care about the copyright,” he says. “I think they’re like the guy who jumps the subway turnstile. They’re hoping nobody’s watching them, and nobody’s going to catch them stealing.”

“TV networks are just another outlet. They need to put together that manic, eye-bleeding shit behind the anchor’s head, so they pull together a collage of nonsense by getting photographs off the Internet,” says Conor Corcoran, a Philadelphia attorney who represents DeCesare.

He continues, “I don’t think it’s economically feasible to do the right thing ahead of time. Sometimes that happens, but it’s smarter financially to steal [images] and wait to get caught on the back end.” Corcoran adds that the cost of paying a settlement after the fact or even litigating a claim is easier and less expensive than tracking down rights holders for permission in advance.

New York attorney Ed Greenberg, who is representing Buford in her claim against Fox News (and also represented Wolff, the Tucson photographer), says copyright infringements by big media organizations are now rampant for three reasons. First, news outlets didn’t used to share content because they were owned separately, but now they share content widely in print, on the Web and on TV with sister media companies. Technology also makes sharing easy and fast. So infringements are, in effect, multiplied through many channels quickly.

Second, Greenberg says, “Those who work at entertainment companies have been raised to download off the Web without consequences. They have no clue” that it is illegal, or don’t care if they do know.

Finally, Greenberg explains, “Companies know that photographers don’t register their [copyrights], and they know that odds of getting a lawyer’s letter [if they infringe a photographer’s copyright] are less than 1 in 100. . . .Their odds of getting away with copyright infringement are very high because photographers don’t do anything about it, or what they do is ineffective.”

Greenberg’s advice? Register all of your images with the U.S. Copyright Office. That makes photographers eligible for statutory damages for infringement, which in turn makes it easier to force infringers to pay settlements without a costly lawsuit.

Greenberg insists that registering images—even thousands of them “takes five minutes. It’s not a big deal.” Which is easy for him to say, of course.

But until a lot more photographers take the trouble and expense to register their copyrights, and then police them, the vast army of image infringers is likely to grow even bigger, enlisting small-timer users and big TV networks alike as it marches on.