Mommy is that artist pulling a Fairey Use?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDUzLe6-YVk&fmt=18

But the people commenting here know nothing about illustration.

To my knowledge, Mr. Snitch and I are the only illustrators who regularly post here. If you limited every discussion to only those trained in one specific field, boy would the internet be a boring place.

Yes, every artist has file folders full of photo references. Maybe the general public isn’t aware of this fact, but it’s not really a tidbit of knowledge necessary for daily life, is it? Most people think artists are born with a crayon in each hand, that we can draw up anything on demand- completely from memory, and we all wear little berets to accent our fancy moustaches. Frankly, I don’t have a problem with folks not understanding my processes. They value my skill more that way.

I don’t think anyone knowledgable with how art and sausages are made, thinks that use of photo reference is wrong. I work almost exclusively from photographs and file footage. What I don’t do is work directly from copyrighted material or pass the efforts of someone else off as my own.

Fairey’s action in this case belittles the effort of the photographer. Now we can debate if the original photo is art as in the artsy-fartsy “I wanted the shadow on his face to symbolize the struggles of the average man to find a decent cheese sandwich” sort of art. But what you can’t deny is that 90% of photo journalism is being in the right place, at the right time, with film in the camera, and extensive training in how to capture a split second image without asking the subject to freeze and say “provolone”.

Now I don’t know about you, but when I pranced down the aisle to accept my overpriced fancy pants degree, there were a bunch of photography students there that day getting the same piece of parchment. They took just as many classes as you and I did, they invested just as much time and talent into their craft.

If Fairey had purchased his own plane ticket, applied for his own press pass, driven to the speech site, sat through 3 hours of political posturing, crawled on his hands and knees up to the speaker’s table to capture that Obama shot, and then altered it later, NOBODY would criticize the Hope image.

But he didn’t. He let someone else do all the hard work. And then he lied about it.

Do I think Fairey traced the photo? No. Do I think he ran it through Illustrator and printed it up, as is? No. Did Fairey use artistic skill to modify an average photograph into a memorable icon? Yes, yes, and yes again.

But no matter how much of the background Fairey cropped or shadows he simplified, no matter how much he cleaned up the tie, ears and shoulder, or the head tilt; he still left far too much of the original photo to claim it as his own creation. The photographer deserved credit. And as copyright holder, the AP should have been contacted for permission (if indeed they were the legal owners).

As artists, we’ve all had to stand back and ask ourselves “have I changed this image enough to call it my own?” Every artist worth his gouache worries about crossing the line and using photography as a crutch. It’s part of our training, part of our ethical core to make sure that everything that goes out with our name on it, is the fruit of our fingers.

Fairey stopped doing that long ago.

I don’t know why. Maybe it was the financial success that fell on him when Obey took off. More than likely, he just got lazy. As artists, we’ve all seen cases of seriously talented people taking the easy way out.

Fairey’s one of them.

When every single item that comes out of an artist’s studio can be directly linked with the fruit of someone elses fingers, as artists we ought to call them on it.

As people, as humans, as consumers we ought to call them out on it.

You really don’t need charcoal stained fingers to understand Fairey’s hypocrisy.