Owners of images

If you get down to it, nothing we do is truly original. I take influence (with due respect and deference) from every photographer whose work I have ever seen. I also could possibly credit my photography professor in 1999, Dr. (whose name escapes me). Every artist I know takes can take credit for the establishment of conventions from former artists- from how to cut the matte board to taking advantage of known aesthetic preferences such as the 2/3 rule to using burn-and-dodge.

However, reading several random blogs lately has caused me to collect another pet peeve (it seems so un-me to have pet-peeves) [another aside- my other pet- peeve is having to say goodnight to random restaurant hostesses as I leave a restaurant even though I have never met them in my life]. Getting to the point, several that I have read lately have used OTHER PEOPLE'S PHOTOGRAPHS in some sort of pseudo-hip montage of images that they like. One of them had some really neat new-age music playing to "his" photos of urban Tokyo that I was really enjoying. These two blogs that I'm thinking of mentioned only later on or in another post ("again, these are not my images"...) that these images were not their own. How much was I suddenly disappointed with my fellow human being, as fast as I was impressed by him, when I saw that statement?

I find no fault with homage, or with illustrating a point using a stock image or illustration, but I think these cases cross the line from art appreciation to plagarism.

The blogosphere unfolds as it will, and the essence of this space is that there are no rules and people can express whatever they want. Build whatever persona they want. However, it seems to be with the intention of advancing one-self by creating this larger, more chic, more edgy and more artistic self do these people post art that is not theirs...

Needless to say, all images here (with the exception of the pen-and-graph graphic) are my own.