On Plagiarism and Similarities

[Greg Miller]

Harry - your images, to me, are immediatley different than Zielskes'. While similar they are also distinctly different. That's why the "five sets of tripod holes" or "reshooting cliche subjects" arguments don't hold water for me. There are so many other variables such a time of day, time of year, type of weather, type of lighting, compostion, focal length, type of film, aperture setting, shutter speed, filtration,... I think it's actually hard to make an image that's almost exactly the same as someone else's. I'm always amused by wokshops where there are 12 photographers all shooting the same subject at the same time in the same conditions and they all end up with very different images. And even with static landscapes, how often do you hover over the camera waiting ever so patiently for that magic nanosecond where the light and all other conditions come together before you trip the shuttter?

[Bruce Watson]

Shooting and re-shooting already cliche subjects can't be plagiarism. If the second photographer "stole" the fist guy's photo and called it his own, that would be plagiarism. But simply taking a photo of the same subject can't be - that would make everyone who snapped a photo of the Eiffel Tower into a plagiarist! I think this would be especially true when there is only one reasonably accessible angle that people can take the photo which still results in a decently-composed photo.

Yes. Well said.

Another way to look at it is that anyone who bothers to make the shot does the same amount of work. They have to get their own permissions to shoot from the buildings. They have to schlep their equipment. Do their setups. Wait for their light. Both of them. And they both end up with an original photograph (a sheet of film). They can't be copying each other -- they make prints from their own originals.

The argument against plagiarism is that one person should not profit from another's work. In this case, they both did the work. And while you could maybe argue that it's not ethical for them to shoot the same scene (questionable argument to my way of thinking) then you have to flog them both. I can't believe that either of them was the first to photograph that scene. Surely someone in Shanghai got there first, probably while the building where these two photographs were made was under construction. Does that mean that they are both plagiarising some poor Chinese construction worker's cousin who has a large format camera (he got on eBay of course)?

[harrykauf]

Greg, I agree it is impossible to make exactly the same photograph. I just
wanted to show that you can come home from a location with a suprisingly
similar image. I didn't know about the spiral for example when I went to shanghai
but it is at the end of the bridge that I crossed in a taxi coming from the airport.
I wanted to see how it looks from above so I walked around the area untill I
felt comfortable to ask a guard in one of the apartment blocks if I could come in and
take a photograph. After that I started seeing that image everywhere, even
on a box of chocolates in a duty free shop at the airport.

Edit:
I find this quote from the original article a bit over the top:
"Concerning details, colors and lighting, the Zielskes’ 'Nanpu Bridge, Shanghai 2002' and 'Xuhui II, Shanghai 2005' clearly [...] bear resemblance to a work which is well-established on the international art market as an original statement, both aesthetically and in content, "

I wouldn't call it an original statement but rather artistic interpretation. It is different from
works like that of Gregory Crewdson for example where the artist has full control over light and
content.

[paulr]

Shooting and re-shooting already cliche subjects can't be plagiarism.

I kind of agree with that ... although it's not the subject that makes the image a cliche (or an example of someone's unique vision) but rather the way it's seen. Photographing an avocado in the manner of weston is more derivative than photographing a bell pepper in a new and unique way.

What's troubling in these examples isn't that they both photographed the same subject, but that they did it in the same way, down to all but the most trivial details.

If this is already a cliche vantage point of these subjects, then the whole argument becomes moot .. but this I don't know about.

[Jim Ewins]

A photograph depicts a subject at a unique moment in time, never to be repeated.

[JW Dewdney]

If you're worried about giving away your location because the photograph will be 'stolen' - well, you're not really doing your job as a photographer, it seems to me.

[400d]

I think the plagiarism idea is just stupid. Why don't you (whoever) go patent your Grand Teton then?

[Joseph O'Neil]

A bit off tangent, but this situation reminds of of sometimes I setup my Tachi and tripod, andduring tourist season (where ever and when ever that might be), sometimes a person or people will look at what I am photographing, even go as far as to say out lout "oh good idea" or "good shot", then have the audacity to stand right in front of my camera while they take their shot.

I think we can all see very quickly, in most circumstances, the differnece between two people who independantly saw the same great shot at different times, and someobdy who sets out to copy another's art right from the start.

joe

[tim atherton]

I think the plagiarism idea is just stupid. Why don't you (whoever) go patent your Grand Teton then?

I think the sense of plagiarism speaks as much to lack of imagination as to anything else

[Paul Coppin]

I think its presumptious at best to think that anything in the "public domain" can be plagiarized. Its very possible that two people can have the same basic vision of something (including the tweaking, such as colour). It only becomes plagiarism if I take your work and make it my own.