The triumphant return of David W. Streets to the limelight does not bear on the Norsigian-Adams contretemps, but on a brand-new situation: the 1980 garage-sale purchase by one Anton Fury of anonymous negatives of Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. Streets has, so far, behaved in a more circumspect manner than he did with the arguable “Ansel Adams” negatives. Instead of proposing authorship or pretending to other expertise, as he did with the Norsigian material, Streets is . . . crowdsourcing. […]
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If you’re reading this, then obviously Jesus Christ did not consider you worthy of ascent to Heaven with Him in the Rapture. You’re doomed, in short, to stay around until the middle of the fall semester. And, as part of your punishment for your sins, you’ll receive these missives from me with updates about the lunacies and shenanigans of your colleagues in our little corner of the universe. […] The collection was not put together in the standard way — by curators picking and choosing individual pieces. Photographers gave work in return for free materials, and gave what they felt like giving. It is, frankly, very uneven; there are some great pieces at one end of the spectrum, and some godawful ones at the other. Actually, the best individual works are often by lesser-known or even unknown photographers. The “name” photographers often are represented by lackluster work. […] In a confidential out-of-court settlement this past March, William “Wild Bill” Turnage of the Adams Trust pledged to stop calling Team Norsigian names while Team Norsigian promised to stop using Ansel Adams’s name to validate the anonymous negatives Rick Norsigian bought at a yard sale. Turnage has, at least publicly, kept his part of the bargain. Whether Team Norsigian has done the same I can’t say for sure. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |
Copyright for All Primates?
These images became public-domain material the moment the macaque generated them. Caters licensed the rights to exclusive use of them from Slater, but then faced a conundrum: How could they exercise those rights? Only by maintaining strict control over their availability. (For example, if they’d licensed reproduction rights to a T-shirt manufacturer.) As soon as the agency released digital files of the images for distribution via an online publication, the Daily Mail, their public-domain status became activated, so to speak. […]