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Thursday, February 12, 2009

Now, I Know I'm Not Warhol

John Lennon - (i) inspired by photo by Iain Macmillan
Yeah, I'm still trying to find photo credits for those that have inspired my pieces. I finally found the original photo with credit for this iconic John Lennon image.

On the left is my painting of John Lennon on a copy of his "Rock 'n' Roll". On the right is Warhol's album cover for Lennon's "Menlove_Ave.". It's pretty obvious we used the same photo.

But did Warhol take the original photo? The Wikipedia entry linked to above uses the word "effected" to describe how Warhol created the image. It, and no other link I could find related to the album cover image, said anything about the original photo.

So who did take the original? I really had to dig online to find this poster. And I could really only make out "Macmillan" there in the upper left corner. It's Iain Macmillan. He also took a companion photo of Yoko. He also took the photo for the cover of "Abbey Road"!

Halleluiah! Why was that so hard to find? Here's an image that everybody knows, that's used on commemorative coins and t-shirts. Now, Yoko took the cover photo for "Imagine" and certainly owns the copyright on this image as well, but man! Well, I guess I could be overestimating my online searching abilities. I dunno.

Anyway, I did find a bunch more today along with this one, so that's good. But, I'm planning on painting Kanye West tomorrow, inspired by a photo that, yet again, I could only find one online copy and it was on a blog that gave no source or credit. *Sigh*

Peace.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I do have something to say. And 550 slides and negatives of John and Yoko at the Bed-in for peace in Montreal.A book coming out in May in the US. I congratulate you on your art. Regardless of the accolades or lack of same that an artist receives, the process of making art comes from the same source for everybody and the process is the same. Warhol or Walter, you are touching a special place and in this site exponentially inspiring otherss.Thanks for giving credit to the original photographer. Right on.

Anonymous said...

How do you decide when crediting alone is enough and when you need to seek permission to use the piece as your source image? Despite all the info. I looked up on the topic I don't feel confident yet in drawing that line when it comes to my own work so I'm feel hesitant about using images other than my own as source material. I'd love to hear how other artists approach this.