» Isn't it possible Shepard Fairey forgot which image he used?
I’m still fixed on this story.
The AP filed court papers saying Shepard Fairey is lying about simply misremembering which photo he used to create the Obama Hope poster. (Fairey originally said he used the Clooney photo above, and now he’s recanted and says he used the close-up.)
The AP alleges:
“It is simply not credible that Fairey somehow forgot in January 2009 which source image he used to create the Infringing Works, which were completed only a year earlier in January 2008,” according to the papers filed Tuesday. “It also strains credulity that an experienced graphic designer such as Shepard Fairey misremembered cropping George Clooney out of a source image and making other changes … when no such cropping or other changes were ever made.”
But is this right? When I write, I’m always careful to link to and properly quote the source material that I’m using. Nevertheless, a lot goes on in the editing process—a process that goes on while you’re writing—and if you asked me a year later how I was inspired to use some turn of phrase or even where I got a specific quote from, I think I’d very likely misremember.
Look at the two pictures above: Obama’s expression is the same in each. The photos were taken by the same photographer at the same event, seconds apart. All you have to do to the Clooney one to make it into the close-up is apply one Photoshop transformation—Crop. It’s a one-second process.
Fairey is a slippery character—he’s admitted to destroying evidence to cover up which picture he used—but still, it seems entirely reasonable to me that he could have genuinely forgotten which picture he used.
The AP seems to simply misunderstand the ease of editing photos—or, really, editing anything—in the modern age. Copying, pasting, cropping, resizing—these are the bread-and-butter actions of modern info-mining. They are entirely forgettable.
October 20, 2009, 12:36pm Comments
