Four Bangladeshi Posters

Bangladesh mothers and daughter fighting for independence

Ministry of Information and Broadcasting during the War of Independence 1971,  reprint Liberation War Memorial Museum

The "Language Martyrs' Day", Gopal, Dhaka University, (c.1991).

 Messages commemorating 21 February 1952.

Santu Saha, The Earth is for Peace and Tranquility, 2007

Blues, According to Buddy Guy

This year's Annual Kennedy Center Honor, the highest official recognition for excellence in the arts, well deservedly went to Buddy Guy. According to the citation the reward celebrated Guy’s

“tremendous influence on virtually everyone who’s picked up an electric guitar in the last half century, including Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Slash, ZZ Top, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and John Mayer.”

Buddy who arrived to Chicago's blues scene from his native Louisiana in October 1957, believes the windy city is the true home of the blues. In Chicago, he became a true disciple of blues legend Muddy Waters in the late 1950s, and now at the age of 76, he is admired as the standard bearer for Chicago blues. He is making some of the best music of this era.

On the last day of Christmas ...

D

Chicago blues; what most of the world missed after the 60s.

There was a short blues revival in the early to mid-1960s in which Al Wilson a white musician of blues rock group Canned Heat, and the Newport Folk Festival played the key roles. According to Dick Waterman (Francis Davis, The History of the Blues, New York: Hyperion, 1995) Al had to help Son House, an alcoholic blues singer of the 1948-64 period, to relearn his old songs in order to be able to perform at the Festival:

A month or so [after his "rediscovery"], we brought Son to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to get him ready for the Newport Folk Festival [and introduced him to] Al Wilson. [...] Al played opentuning bottleneck and could play all the styles. He could play Bukka White, Son House, Charley Patton, and Blind Lemon Jefferson — he could really play. And he sat down with Son, knee to knee, guitar to guitar, and said, "Okay, this is the figure that in 1930, you called 'My Black Mama,'" and played it for him. And Son said, "Yeah, yeah, that's me, that's me. I played that." And then Al said; "Now about a dozen years later, when Mr. [John] Lomax came around, you changed the name to 'My Black Woman,' and you did it this way." He showed him. And Son would say, "Yeah, yeah. I got my recollection now, I got my recollection now." And he would start to play, and the two of them played together. Then, Al reminded him of how he changed tunings, and played his own "Pony Blues" for him.

There would not have been a rediscovery of Son House in the 1960s without Al Wilson. Really. Al Wilson taught Son House how to play Son House.

However with the emergence of Bob Dylan, Mike Bloomfield and the Butterfield Blues Band electric blues was forgotten by the mass media and lost its audiences again. The Newport Folk Festival had to be called off after 1970 and when they buried Hubert Sumlin in December 2011 at Washington Memory Gardens Cemetery in Homewood Barely 30 people showed up at the funeral of a bluesman who left Chicago years ago, dying in New Jersey at age 80. In a recent article Chicago Tribune lamented that:

Chicago, unfortunately, has turned its back on this music. While jazz thrives in clubs and concert halls, while classical music flourishes in citadels such as Symphony Center and the Civic Opera House, while alternative rock shakes up music rooms across the city, the blues barely registers on the city's cultural consciousness. Unloved by funders, infrequently backed by City Hall, barely championed by its own organizations, the blues has been left to fend for itself in a harsh local environment.

and here is a sample of  what will be lost:

Muddy Waters was born McKinley Morganfield, in the tiny hamlet of Rolling Fork, Mississippi, on April 4, 1915. At the age of three he lost his mother and was raised by his maternal grandmother, who gave him his nickname. At the early age he became a farm laborer and like many others was drawn to music to lessen the harsh adversity of life and by the age of thirteen he finally got himself a harmonica. But after couple of years he was attracted to the "bottleneck" style of guitar which could accompany his voice, complementing the nuances of its rhythmic harmony as it is articulated in singing the blues, thus at the age of seventeen Muddy made the switch to guitar.

Over the next ten years inspired by Robert Johnson's blues in the Mississippi Delta Muddy was singing and perfecting his powerful style with a sorrowful voice enriched by his soulful and unique expression. After recording for Library of Congress' folksong archives in 1941 which revealed his mastery of Delta bottleneck guitar. Blues began as the music of black sharecroppers in the poor cotton-farming region of the Mississippi Delta, and traveled north to Chicago with the sharecroppers as thousands of them moved north in search of a better life. In Chicago, the emergence of blues culture in the 1920s coincided with increased musical performance and recording nationwide and paralleled the dramatic growth of black urban enclaves during the Great Migration. Muddy followed this trend moved to Chicago in 1942, adopted his nickname and switched to the electric guitar, and revolutionized urban blues. Songs like "Rolling Stone" and "Mannish Boy" recorded in the late 40's with Chess Records set a new standard and modern Chicago blues was born!

Muddy cobered many of Willie Dixon's songs and made them major blues hits, especially "Hoochie Coochie Man" and "Got My Mojo Working". Other artists who played with Muddy sound like a Hall of Fame roster of blues greats: Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, James Cotton, Little Walter, and Jimmy Rogers. But when you start talking about the "Hall of Fame", Muddy Waters is the first inductee--his music forms the roots of Chicago blues!

In the dark of the woods a green shoot wavers up towards the light.

On the fifth day of Christmas ...

The Fourth Day of Chrrstmas.

On the Third day of Christmas my true love sent to me ...

A gift for your second day of Christmas!

So This is Christmas! -

Happy New Year

Copyright & My Posters

Dear Andy Mabbett.

I believe my works satisfy the criteria established by the following passage in the 1994 decision of the Supreme Court in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music:

The central purpose of this investigation [into the purpose and character of the defendant’s use] is to see, in Justice Story’s words, whether the new work merely “supersede[s] the objects” of the original creation . . . or instead adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first with new expression, meaning, or message; it asks, in other words, whether and to what extent the new work is “transformative.” Although such transformative use is not absolutely necessary for a finding of fair use, the goal of copyright, to promote science and the arts, is generally furthered by the creation of transformative works. Such works thus lie at the heart of the fair use doctrine’s guarantee of breathing space . . . . (510 U.S. at 579 (citations omitted).)

I understand that since my composite posters, like the “Hope Poster" of Shepard Fairey that uses photograph of President Obama by Mannie Garcia for the AP, are created using Referenced Photographs intended to convey a transformative message of my own, without any prejudicial to the photographers' reputation or honor, they are not “improper appropriation ” and they are adhering to Copyright Act's definition of Moral Rights. Furthermore, since my posters are not for profit, and are intended for increased awareness to the plight of humanity, they are protected under the Doctrine of Fair Use. I have published many social and humanistic posters on my websites for a number of years, and despite having more than 400,000 visitors I have not received any complaints from the photographers. It goes without saying that should I receive any information about the photographers I would fully credit them, and if they so wish I will remove their photos.

As the Supreme Court explained in 1994, “[f]rom the infancy of copyright protection, some opportunity for fair use of copyrighted materials has been thought necessary to fulfill copyright’s very purpose, ‘[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.’” (see: Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569, 575 (1994) (second alteration in original) (quoting U.S. CONST. art. I, § 8, cl. 8).) The US Congress has “eschewed a rigid, bright-line approach to fair use,” and thus task of ascertaining fair use “is not to be simplified with bright-line rules.” It has identified “various factors that enable a court to apply an ‘equitable rule of reason’ analysis to particular claims of infringement,” one that calls for “a sensitive balancing of interests". ( Please see: William W. Fisher III, Frank Cost, Shepard Fairey, Meir Feder, Edwin Fountain, Geoffrey Stewart & Marita Sturken, REFLECTIONS ON THE HOPE POSTER CASE, Harvard Journal of Law & Technology Volume 25, Number 2 Spring 2012).

My posters ever so slightly use "appropriation techniques" which have reached new conceptual levels in the context of postmodern art. “Appropriation Art borrows images from popular culture, advertising, the mass media, and other artists and incorporates them into new works of art.” (see:William M. Landes & Daniel B. Levine, The Economic Analysis of Art Law, in 1 HANDBOOK OF THE ECONOMICS OF ART AND CULTURE 211, 217 (2006). For a similar definition — and many examples of appropriation art — see Emily Meyers, Art on Ice: The Chilling Effect of Copyright on Artistic Expression, 30 COLUM. J.L. & ARTS 219, 220–21 (2007). ) The term “appropriation art” is thus used for those works that comment on questions of authorship through appropriation. Most famous of these is Sherrie Levine’s 1981 work After Walker Evans, in which she copied well-known photographs by Walker Evans and displayed the copies as her own work. 113 Such works are defined as appropriation art since they directly comment on issues of authenticity, ownership, and reproducibility. As well, Robert Rauschenberg integrated news photographs into many paintings, often using a typical Abstract Expressionist brushstroke effect to transform the images. Notably, Rauschenberg created a series of silkscreen prints about John F. Kennedy (that presage the Obama Hope Poster). As professor Marita Sturken in the Harvard journal has argued:

The range of techniques that modern artists have used to transform photographs varies significantly, though these works share a sensibility of engagement with the world of news, politics, and the immediacy of the photograph. Some of these artists, like Rauschenberg, transform images by incorporating them into collages; others use color but do not change the image forms dramatically; still others break the images down to the point where they are barely recognizable, remaining only as a trace. Some artists transform images while inserting them whole into their own art works. Barbara Kruger, for instance, has a signature style of enlarged news images with bold phrases splashed across them on red bands. Kruger does not rework the images, but rather obscures parts of them and transforms them through text that operates through irony and critique.

I do understand the doctrine that even snapshots enjoy copyright protection. As Learned Hand pointed out long ago, “no photograph, however simple, can be unaffected by the personal influence of the author, and no two will be absolutely alike.” Contemporary courts, aware of that fact, routinely shield even modestly creative photographs against unauthorized reproduction. (See, e.g., Rogers v. Koons, 960 F.2d 301, 307–08 (2d Cir. 1992); Images Audio Visual Prods. v. Perini Bldg. Co., 91 F. Supp. 2d 1075, 1084–85 (E.D. Mich. 2000)). However, in Feist, the Court noted: The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” Art. I, § 8, cl. 8. . . . To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. In fact, copyright in [a] photograph conveys no rights over the subject matter conveyed in the photograph.” (See NIMMER, supra note 53, § 2.08[E][1] .) An important application of this principle is the rule that the features of the face of a photographic subject are not protected. ( See, e.g., Straus v. DVC Worldwide, Inc., 484 F. Supp. 2d 620, 638 (S.D. Tex. 2007).) This rule is an outgrowth of a fundamental precept of copyright law, known as the “idea/expression” or “fact/expression” distinction, which in turn is rooted in the constitutional basis of the copyright system.

Moreover, a corollary of the idea/expression distinction is that “incidents, characters or settings which are as a practical matter indispensable, or at least standard, in the treatment of a given topic” are not protectable under copyright law. (see: Hoehling v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 618 F.2d 972, 979 (2d Cir. 1980) (quoting Alexander v. Haley, 460 F. Supp. 40, 45 (S.D.N.Y. 1978)). Such elements are known as scènes à faire — a phrase that, roughly translated, means “scenes which ‘must’ be done.” (see: . Schwarz v. Universal Pictures Co., 85 F. Supp. 270, 275 (S.D. Cal. 1945).

Several recent court opinions illustrate my points. In one case, the plaintiff held the copyright for seven images used in advertising concerts by the musical group the Grateful Dead. The defendant, without permission, reprinted copies of those images in a “coffee table book” that recounted the history of the Grateful Dead. The Second Circuit upheld the District Court’s grant of summary judgment to the defendant, relying heavily on the fact that the purposes of the posters and the purpose of the book were different. “[E]ach of [the plaintiff’s] images fulfilled the dual purposes of artistic expression and promotion. . . . In contrast, [the defendant] used each of [the plaintiff’s] images as historical artifacts to document and represent the actual occurrence of Grateful Dead concert events featured on [the book’s] timeline.” Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley Ltd., 448 F.3d 605 (2d Cir. 2006). This difference in purpose, the court concluded, rendered the defendant’s activity “transformative,” despite the fact that the defendant’s book did not criticize or comment upon the posters. Id. at 609–10. Other recent decisions that rest upon the same principle include Núñez v. Caribbean Int’l News Corp., 235 F.3d 18, 22–23 (1st Cir. 2000), and Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 508 F.3d 1146, 1164–65 (9th Cir. 2007).

In conclusion, I would Echo Shepard Fairey's contention that:

I would love to have the clout to command portrait sittings from world leaders, but that is not an option for me and for most artists. For many artists, even licensing an image is not financially feasible. Should artistic commentary featuring world leaders be stifled because of copyright of the reference images, even when the final artistic product has new intent and meaning? Reference is critical to communication, and, in my opinion, reference as a part of social commentary should not be stifled.

All The best Guity Novin, Artist and founder of Transpressionism

A Message for NRA!