In the past, I have refrained from photographing flat art because I though there is no creativity involved in doing so. You just use the camera as a copy machine. However, returning from a trip in Europe, I thought that in a gallery of travel photos of, let say Ghent in Belgium, it would be nice to have some pictures of the "Adoration of the mystic lamb" (this is an example, many people stop in that town just to see that painting). Then I remembered that some of the images of Misrach's desert cantos were just of paintings, and of course they are reproduced in books and sold as fine art prints at high prices. There is also images of Struth that are just of a couple of paintings on a wall. This made me curious about the copyright issues. If I walk in a museum, and take a photograph of a painting, who owns the copyright to the photograph ? Do I have the right to sell the photograph without the museum's permission ? If so, does anybody has the right to copy the photograph ?
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