bloodoftheyoung:

Ryan McGinley vs Janine Gordon… well, we talked about this seven months ago, but now we have an official dismissal… but no precedent on idea ownership. 

Recently, a young student has been emailing me about this travesty and… yet again, I can’t get on the side of Jah Jah Gordon or these trivialities. However, it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be discussed further.

To preface: I don’t care for Janine Gordon’s work. I care even less about Ryan McGinley. However, I will give McGinley this- he did spark a lot of young photographers to start shooting. You can decide if that’s a good or bad thing.

While examining the entire stock of compared images, one starts to sway back and forth. If we’re to play the “who shot it better” game, I suppose McGinley is the clear winner (with the exception of those terrible HDR looking Levi’s ads). If we’re trying to pin the photographs together, our collective brows are all found furrowed. 

Case in point: my favorite comparison images,  ”The Real Deal” and “Laura.” Two subjects set low in the frame in a big, blue sky. Well, i’m going ahead and saying that this idea, a subject in the vast nothing/everything of a mid-afternoon sky, has been seen prior to Gordon’s 2000 image…


Wait, one second. 2000? Like, 12 years ago? 
Oh. I see.
You’re interested… in claiming ownership… of the idea… of a low-angle shot?


Gordon’s claiming of composition and characteristics, while more than likelyreferenced by McGinley, dates back just over a decade? Oh, come on. I’m going to go ahead and say that every image, every idea, every EVERYTHING that Gordon claims as her own started somewhere else. As I told the upset student who thought I “didn’t get it,” her work is primarily based in generality as well. From mosh pits, nude bodies, lovers, boxers… all very commonly photographed subjects. Why? Due to the spectacle. Debord’s Society of the Spectacle asserts that “passive identification with the spectacle supplants genuine activity,” which brings one to argue that the “other,” a wild life of motorcycles and naked women, is in fact a constructed facade- the most common of all “alternative culture.”

I compare Gordon’s work to early Nan Goldin (which is oh-so-easy to do), just based on the ‘painterly poses’ of the subjects. Nay, a bit overreaching but i’ll stand by it. What about Ted Pushinsky’s fighters? I mean, she DOES have fighters… in black in white. Boom, case closed.   


Nope. Don’t go there.

Ideas will always get stolen, reused, re-appropriated. Ryan McGinley nodded in her direction but took the photos further. Yes, did them better. Isn’t that what art is, anyways? Valuable based on the final result itself, not where it came from? Everything up to the point of a finished product is just… nothing. How you got there, the notes you took- all nothing. 

McGinley’s camp said it best- “Plainly,” Gordon “has no claim to ideas as general and unprotectable as, for example, an interracial couple kissing; a person gazing skyward with outstretched arms; or a man riding on a spotted horse.” 

Exactly. Photography is an art based around ‘the general idea.’ As wave after wave of college-aged artists bow at the alter of William Eggleston and Walker Evans, the commonality of photography is what makes it such a popular art. However, this leads one to argue another point: what makes a photograph valuable? Is it the photographer themselves? For the most part, yes. Whether it’s forming a career based on two or three popular series or showing hundreds of photographs a month, these traits start to build the myths that make work sell.

I don’t think it’s a great idea to steal ideas, but everything comes from somewhere. By 1985, artists were claiming there was nothing left to photograph… everything already existed. In 2012, everybody has a dSLR or a film scanner and truly believes they can take a photograph. I can only shrug.

With the recent outcome of Cariou vs Prince going the other way- where should the law stand on territory ‘beyond common culture,’ such as contemporary art? What makes my work mine? Could Kodak sue me if I sell prints with TMAX sprocket holes? What about clothing designers suing me for showcasing their ‘art’ in a manner in which they disagree with? Where are the lines, and will they work for me?

In a time where litigation runs wild, the ethics of producing art are more grey than ever. I guess we have to be more careful not to get caught. Think about that next time you peer through your viewfinder… you have 35mm of space to copy a photo that already exists.