Instant headache for Polaroid shooters
Taken from the BJP.
Sotheby's will auction off a unique collection of photographs in June. But some of the high-profile artists who shot them aren't happy
Nine-Part Self Portrait by Chuck Close, courtesy of Sotheby's.
There are times when copyright is rendered meaningless, especially when a law court fails to grasp the uniqueness of an artwork, and the fate of the Polaroid Collection is a pertinent example of this.
Built over the past four decades, the collection holds between 16,000 and 24,000 Polaroids, shot by an impressive line-up of the world’s greatest artists and photographers, including Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, Chuck Close and Robert Frank.
On 21 June, 1200 of these Polaroids will go under the hammer at a one-of-a-kind auction in New York – much to the dismay of some of the artists who shot them.
The auction stems from the collapse of Polaroid last year, after its parent company found itself embroiled in a Ponzi scheme. In August 2009, a Minnesota Bankruptcy Court approved a request from PBE Corporation (a remnant of the collapsed Petters Group, which owned Polaroid Corporation) to break up and sell the collection.
Regarded as Polaroid’s greatest financial asset, PBE hired Sotheby’s to recoup its losses. The auction is expected to fetch between $7.5m and $11.5m, with some images selling for at least $400,000.
However, the actual ownership of the collection is matter for debate. In effect, PBE doesn’t own the copyright but, says American critic Allan Coleman, it doesn’t need to in order to go ahead with the sale. “What they are auctioning is not the copyright but the objects,” he tells BJP. “Copyright remains with the photographer.” In this case though, copyright ultimately becomes useless because of the uniqueness of a Polaroid.
“In the US there are two levels of copyright protection,” Coleman explains. “The first level comes into force automatically when you create something. If you can prove you created it, you can prevent anyone from exploiting it. There is a second higher level of copyright protection when you register your work with the Library of Congress. In order to register, you need to supply the library with a copy of the work,” he adds. “With this level of protection, you can sue for statutory damages if someone exploits your work. With the first level, you would have to prove damages, which isn’t always easy.”
When Polaroid built its extensive collection, the contracts it drafted gave the artists access to the works in perpetuity. “They could access and borrow their images whenever they wanted for their own use – exhibitions, books, and so on,” says Coleman.
But, this contract will be nullified once the collection gets dispersed and changes hands. “It’s no longer possible for the photographers to access the work,” he says.
The fact that it’s virtually impossible to replicate an image shot on instant film makes access to the work essential for photographers to assert their rights. “Since they don’t have access, they can’t license the works. All they have is the copyright, which is meaningless now. I don’t think the court understood the unique nature of the collection.”
In a last-ditch attempt to derail the auction, some photographers are planning to file a motion for a re-hearing, but time is already running out. Sotheby’s is now marketing the June auction, with Denise Bethel, director of the Photographs Department in New York proclaiming: “This will be the first time in the history of our market that we have offered a collection based upon a technology, rather than an artist or a theme.”
Doyle says;
As you may or may not know I have always hated Polaroid and was probably one of the only people in the world that was glad to see the back of it. It always baffled me when people used the medium, intended to test exposure and composition, to produce a final image the size of a big postage stamp. Polaroid was always intended as a throw away medium. How it became otherwise is beyond my baldy way of thinking. There was of course Type 55, that instant neg which people never 'finished' properly and either ended up with a soft torn negative, covered in all kinds of fluff and grit, or faded beyond print ability. It was in short far from ideal.
So in short I only have one thing to say to the photographers who are wining about losing their little squares;
You should of thought about what would happen to your image when you decided to make it using polaroid.
You wouldn't give a negative away would you!
Its been some eight years since I last frequented Southend. Last time it was on a rainy bank holiday Monday when I happened to capture the above image which has severed me well and can be seen in the latest show here.
