Letting go

Photographer: Jan Murphy.

Earlier I wrote a post about rewriting the past. The gist of it was that rather than dwelling on negative memories, one should dwell on positive ones, to avoid living a life marked by anger, pain and desire for revenge.
However, what I am not willing to do is delete people and situations from my past. I can delete the pain and view what happened with some detachment, but 'delete' the occurrance, no, I will not do that, it makes no sense.
This is a grand opening to tackle a very mundane matter which has been causing some irritation and misunderstanding all around.
Some time ago I joined an art blog as a contributing editor. I was fully aware of the personal conflict existing between the current editor and  his former close associates, which at some point turned into a feud, with complete strangers taking sides - never a good thing. I took the view that it was a personal issue, albeit a very delicate and highly painful one for both parties. In other words, I refused to be involved. I looked at the actual project, which is that of publishing online some of the best work to be found in art nude. I loved the idea of contributing features and bringing some exposure to new and upcoming artists.   The project is entirely non-profit, I certainly dont get paid for contributing. I do something similar in my capacity as moderator of a couple of deviantArt groups,  I do it entirely for pleasure.


One of my main interests in contributing to this unnamed art blog is to showcase the work of art models from their point of view. I am happy to feature models who usually select their favourite photographs among those in their body of work and comment on the reasons why they like those photos.
A model by definition is the subject of a photograph. S/he is a collaborator, without the model that photograph would not exist. Yes, there is the whole issue of copyright, which is the photographer's. But unless this is specified to the contrary in the model release or in the agreement the model signs, models are entitled to use the photographs for which they model in their portfolios, the actual book or the online folio - the latter is more common. They cannot sell pictures or reproduce them for profit  without permission. Most models do not care about selling anything, they simply want to be seen, as this will attract even more bookings. When they do commercial work they use tearsheets in their portfolios, so called because they are ripped from the pages of the magazine where the ad had appeared. Nowadays tearsheets are scanned into online folios.
The above gives an overview of the issue of models and their images.

Back to the matter at hand. I asked a couple of models whether they would like to be featured in the blog. They agreed. I reminded the first one, who was a newbie,  to check with all the photographers she has worked with whether she could publish online, in this not for profit art blog, any of the images of hers taken by them. They were all very happy, provided, they said, their work was duly credited. One of them said he did not want to have his images published (anything to do with the fact I was the editor?) but as the model was very proud of them we agreed to mention the images and  give a link to the photographer's portfolio without reproducing them. It worked well (and it was free publicity for the photographer), no objections so far.
The second model, very experienced,  sent her images with some very interesting captions. She is the muse of a known photographer, so her body of work consists of images which she has actively collaborated with him in making. He is happy for her to use these images. She has also worked with other photographers and had the distinction of having a beautiful image of hers published in a well known art quarterly, showing her nude in Savile Row, with her reflection in the brass plate of the famous Dege and Skinner shop. It was an early morning shot. It never occurred to me to question whether there would be a problem in reproducing that image which is actually in her online portfolio, of course with the usual credits.  I thought everything was sorted.

Test shot for commercial shoot modelled by me. Courtesy of my former agency Dynamite Models

The feature went up the day before yesterday. This is where the whole thing gets messy. My co-editor wrote yesterday a hasty email saying he took down the image following comments received by the photographer, which he interpreted as signalling unhappiness at being in the feature.  He did not tell me what the comments were.  I thought it all seemed a little  unfair to the model who was justly proud of being the subject of that photograph.  I quickly changed the text, mentioning the publication in which the photo had been published and giving a link to the image as it appears in the model's online gallery, once again crediting the photographer and also the publication for carrying it.

What actually happened will remain a mystery. It seems  that neither my co-editor nor the photographer were entirely happy about that image being featured and /or the links given, so the best course of action was to  remove the paragraph altogether, which I did last night.

Photographer: Jan Murphy

Later the model  sent me a message to say she now no longer likes the picture and this has been removed from her online portfolio.  Well done, Heather, in a tug of war if you let go of the rope the other party will find that there is nothing to pull.

I have a view about this incident. I take no one's side. I just think that whatever happened in the past happened, but there is no need to  dwell on it any further. For both parties to deny all traces of earlier collaborations is ungracious. To forget that at the end of the day the feature was for the model to showcase her work as a model and instead be swayed by old rancours was a little churlish. There was no need to delete anything, the whole thing snowballed and turned into an unnecessary drama. The model  ended up becoming a scapegoat. Kudos to her for  removing herself from this position by completely letting go. She should not have had to.
La rançon de la gloire, said my co-editor, whose mother tongue is French, summing up the situation. Not quite. Attempting to delete and rewrite the past, I'd say, with reference to the whole episode.
Let's hope these incidents will not occur again, for no one gains anything from them.

(All photos modelled by Alex B)

Comments

  1. Alex, I never asked Heather to take down this image, I merely asked for my website to be linked to this and NUDE to be mentioned.
    This is complete fabrication and slander.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jan, I am sorry, but the original post said "From a shoot with Jan Murphy [link] and featured in Carrie Leigh's NUDE magazine in Spring 2010. I love how Jan managed to capture my reflection in the brass name plate"
    Chris wrote this morning saying you had sent two messages and deleted the photo. It was not clear why he did that, he probably felt uncomfortable, so he probably overreacted. I told Heather and she removed the photo from her dA gallery and Purestorm portfolio.
    It was just upsetting for everyone involved and at the end of the day it did not help anyone.

    ReplyDelete

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