The Southeast Museum of Photography, in partnership with Atlantic Center for the Arts, presents “Taking Note,” an exhibition of photographic works paired with written reflections by photojournalist Colin Finlay. The exhibit is on display now through Feb. 3 in the Master Artist Gallery at Atlantic Center for the Arts, 1414 Art Center Ave., New Smyrna Beach.

The photographs capture remarkable moments: an intimate view of Linda Perry composing music at home; Rick Rubin framed within the front seat of The Band’s old VW tour bus; Mike Campbell hanging around The Clubhouse, the exclusive space in which Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers recorded and rehearsed; Beck writing notes in the margins of his lyrics; and Bonnie Raitt’s profile softly illuminated against the dark, wood-paneled studio at Grandmaster Recorders.

Also featured is Mr. Finlay’s commercial portraiture and campaign work, in which he places subjects against the backdrop of Los Angeles’ city streets, historic buildings and coastlines.

In addition to the photographs, a selection of vinyl records related to the exhibition are mounted on the walls. The gallery also features a Spotify playlist, allowing visitors to explore the richness and diversity of each artist through a curated selection of their songs.

ACA is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays. For more information, call (386) 427-6975 or visit atlanticcenterforthearts.org.

Hevin Ramsey felt a pressure to succeed as a Black student who was the lone member of the University of Louisville’s photography program.

She relied on UofL’s resources, faculty and staff to get her through her toughest challenge—a comprehensive review of all she had learned—leading the way to a bachelor of fine arts from the Hite Institute of Art and Design in the College of Arts & Sciences.

“UofL helped me pass my review and graduate this fall because of the fantastic people … who played a significant role in who I am as an artist and as a future alumnus of UofL,” Ramsey said.

Ramsey, a Woodford R. Porter Scholar, worked at the independent student newspaper, The Louisville Cardinal, and as a student assistant at Ekstrom Library. Read more about her Fall BFA Thesis Exhibition here.

Asked about her favorite class, she said her experience in a directed study working on a PhotoVoice project with Professor Mary Carothers of the Hite Institute made a profound impact on her.

The project focused on a Metro United Way/Russell Place of Promise guaranteed income program called YALift! Ramsey and other artists reflected on the meaning of guaranteed income in their work. Called “Take this!” the project included narratives to go with their imagery.

“Paring narratives with imagery greatly influenced my BFA track,” Ramsey said, “which solidified my love for UofL. If I had not gone here, I would have never met Mary Carothers or participated in the PhotoVoice project. It was an experience I will never forget.”

The experience also served as inspiration for her future higher education goals: Ramsey hopes to someday return to UofL for a Master of Fine Arts degree or an individualized major in visual sociology.

Ramsey, of Louisville, said her family has close ties to the university and she feels it has evolved along with the city. Being accepted at UofL was a “dream come true,” she said.

“I loved visiting different places that integrate the community and the university, such as the MFA building in Portland and the Cressman Center,” she said.

After graduation, Ramsey plans to open a small business focused on film photography and crochet projects.

Visitors look at displayed photographs at an exhibition titled ‘Rage and Hope’ at the DrikPath Bhobon in Dhaka on Thursday. — Md Saurav

A photography exhibition highlighting the human rights situation in the country was inaugurated at the DrikPath Bhobon in Dhaka on Thursday.

The exhibition titled ‘Rage and Hope’ has been jointly organised by Drik Picture Library and the UN Resident Coordinator Office in Dhaka marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, observed globally on December 10.

The exhibition is featuring 29 photographs, one audio installation and one video installation addressing border killings, tea-estate workers’ protests, enforced disappearances, extra-judicial killings, structural discrimination, green protests, working conditions of labourers and more.

In his welcome speech, photographer and activist Shahidul Alam said that the photographs, which were taken under challenging circumstances,  portray both human rights violations and signs of hope.

Senior human rights adviser to the UNRC Huma Khan said that equality for all was still not a reality.

‘We are committed to protecting the rights of Bangladesh’s people,’ she said.

She also said that the exhibition celebrated diverse opinions and views of people coming from different backgrounds.

Photographer Taslima Akhter said that people were not able to speak freely due to the fear of being murdered and enforced disappearances.

‘At present, the common people and workers of the country are faced with a suffocating situation. We want things to change,’ added Taslima.

Coordinator of Mayer Daak, a platform for the families of the victims of enforced disappearances, Afroja Islam Akhi said that the current state of affairs in the country was well-known to everyone.

She said, ‘Families and loved ones of missing persons are passing their days in extreme difficulty. But, we can see hope because many people, who used to spend their lives indoors, are protesting and speaking out on the streets.’

The exhibition will remain open for everyone till December 18.

Photo-thieving criminal gangs and huge corporations profit from stealing our photographs. Let’s stand together and fight back.

It’s Against the Law

Many years ago, someone I knew had downloaded a picture of mine, printed it, and put it in a frame in their house. That was the extent of the thefts that happened back then, and they were done through ignorance of the law. It was a minor issue for me, and a gentle explanation of why it wasn’t acceptable followed. But now, it is criminal gangs, disreputable businesses, and adversarial foreign government agencies behind the wholesale theft of our photos.

Having our photos stolen and used without permission can be a felony. Thanks to the pressure from the big movie companies that rightly wanted to protect their intellectual property, the penalties for copyright theft are huge. Despite that, copyright theft is commonplace, and nobody is doing much about it.

Consequently, artists are finding it increasingly difficult to protect their work, especially so with globalization. Some countries’ disreputable regimes seem content to allow our work to be used by criminals operating in their own countries because it diverts revenue from us to their coffers. But it’s also corporate greed that enables that theft to happen.

The Wholesale Theft of Images on Facebook

On Facebook, there are numerous pages with legitimate-sounding names that have thousands of followers. They routinely post stolen photos.

Recently, I saw a fabulous photo on my feed depicting a raven that appeared to be holding the sun in its beak. It appeared on an aggregate Facebook page called The Mind Circle that posted other people’s images on a nearly daily basis. I tracked down and spoke to the original photographer In British Columbia, Shelley Lewis. She told me how frustrated she was by the ongoing battle of stopping others from stealing her work in this way.

I contacted Tran Tuan Viet, an incredible award-winning photographer based in Hanoi, Vietnam, whose work gets used by National Geographic and other major publishers after I saw his work on The Mind Circle Facebook page. Again, his photos had been used without permission:

Yes, so many photos of mine are used without my permission, included the article that you quoted.

Similarly, Nicola Di Tinto from Italy had his work stolen by The Mind Circle too.

I spent a day going through the photos appearing on the Mind Circle website and Facebook page and emailed several of the people whose photos appeared to have been stolen. They all confirmed that their photos were used without permission. In fact, I didn’t find any single image on the site that had been used with the permission of its creator. So, I tried to track down the perpetrators.

Of course, those involved in criminal activity are unlikely to make their names known, and since new data protection laws have come into place, it’s harder to find out who they are. I traced The Mind Circle’s Facebook page back to their website’s server. The website was anonymously owned.

It’s incredible to know that The Mind Circle has been operating on Facebook since 2014 posting plagiarized images, and yet Meta has done nothing about it. Why? The reason may well be because Facebook earns money from these popular posts. There are thousands of these aggregate sites and each has thousands of followers, which means Meta will be earning advertising revenue from advertising clicks. Similarly, the illegal website hosts cookies for Facebook, Google, and others.

Why do these Facebook pages exist? It seems they are there to drive traffic to their website, where they will get revenue from advertising. However, there is a more sinister side to it. By commenting on the posts and following the links to the site, you are sharing your data with them that could be used for nefarious means.

At best, sites like The Mind Circle are just spongers, freeloaders getting rich from other people’s work. But, just like the VHS and DVD pirates of recent history, some of these types of sites will be run by criminal gangs involved in people trafficking, drug smuggling, child pornography, and slavery. Furthermore, they could be collecting your data on behalf of a hostile foreign government. Your data is a valuable asset that is worth harvesting.

I tried to tackle The Mind Circle by reporting it to Facebook and commenting on the stolen photos. What happened? With no explanation, Facebook blocked me from posting for a day, and the reach of my posts on the Meta sites plummeted. A coincidence? I don’t think so. It seems to me that Meta wants to bully people into not upsetting the bandwagon.

How to Spot Legitimate Sites

How can you tell whether such aggregate Facebook pagers are legitimate or not?

Let’s use the Fstoppers Facebook page as an example of a legitimate site. On Facebook, it posts links directly to its articles on the Fstoppers website. If that article features the work of a photographer, it doesn’t just name that photographer but, wherever possible, links to their webpage as well. Permission is always sought. In that way, the photographer can receive a notification of that backlink to their site.

Conversely, illegitimate sites won’t ever link to the photographer’s website. They might only mention them by name in an attempt to make their post seem legitimate. They sometimes link to a social media account; in which case the photographer isn’t notified and so probably won’t find out about the theft.

Furthermore, a legitimate organization will have in-depth communication details on its Facebook page and website. It will be easy to see who owns the site and where they are based. So, check its About page (if there is one). If it lacks ownership or contact information other than a contact form, it probably cannot be trusted.

Next, go to whois.com and enter the URL there. This site is incredibly useful because it will usually show the server on which the site is hosted and the “abuse” address to which you can send copyright infringement and takedown notices.

How to Fight Back Against the Thieves

Sadly, it’s very hard for anyone other than the victim of the crime to report it. So, if you see what you think is a stolen image on a Facebook page, you could Google search for the photographer and let them know and let them know how to report it.

If your photo has been stolen, then there are things you can do. But first, gathering evidence means visiting the thieves’ sites.

Before doing so, I ensure my computer has adequate protection against malicious websites; good quality anti-virus protection programs have facilities to protect you. I also use ad-blocking programs, Adblock Plus and Ghostery, although these can stop functionality and affect the revenue of genuine sites, so I whitelist those. I could just delete the cookies on my browser, but many of them are useful, keeping me logged into legitimate sites. So, I installed Spybot Search and Destroy, which does a first-class job of removing tracking cookies but leaves the useful ones if I choose to do so.

Taking Down the Stolen Photos

After I take the precautions shown above, I check the websites. It is important to gather as much evidence as possible, including screenshots and URLs.

Disreputable sites like The Mind Circle don’t have an About Us page that gives the name and details of the owners, reputable sites do. I then report the issue everywhere I can. In the USA you can report copyright theft to the US Department of Justice.  Sadly, I can’t report to them from the UK, which is a nuisance because most of the photos being stolen by these criminals belong to people outside the USA. Here in the UK, it is the Trading Standards Authority that deals with it. Local municipalities will often have their own reporting systems too.

It’s relatively easy to find the server that hosts the site through Whois.com. You can send takedown notices to the host via their Abuse page.

However, if you notice your work has been stolen, you won’t be alone. Do a bit of research and find other people’s work that has been used by the site too. Contact them and send coordinated complaints to the website host. The host may then take the entire site down. They are unlikely to with one complaint.

I recommend reporting them to the police too. The more people do this, the more it will show up on crime statistics and the more likely it will be to be addressed in the long-term.

Even if the crooks don’t backlink to you, you can set up Google Alerts to monitor when you are mentioned on the internet.

Can You Sue the Copyright Infringers?

Yes! Some no-win, no-fee lawyers will take on these cases.

I have written in my terms and conditions that anyone who uses my images is agreeing to pay me £250,000 per image, unless otherwise previously agreed. If I can find out who it is that has infringed my copyright, then I send an invoice, and the stolen content soon disappears off the internet.

Is It Fair Use?

No doubt, somebody will cry that this is fair use of the images for them to share your images in this way. However, while using small bits of an original work is probably considered fair use, borrowing large portions isn’t. If the infringement uses the work’s heart, for example, your best images, even a small amount may weigh against a claim of fair use. Furthermore, if the criminals using the work harms the copyright owner’s ability to profit from it, it is unlikely to be considered fair use.

Moreover, using your photographs directly isn’t transformative; it is unlikely to add new meaning to the original image. Therefore, it is only considered a copy of the original. Plus, if the image is used commercially, it is unlikely to be judged fair. Scraping users’ data is commercial use.

It’s Not Just on Facebook

There are regular news stories of photographers and artists who have had their work stolen. Besides the cheap tack it advertises, the Chinese-owned website Temu, with its HQ in the Dublin tax haven, sells goods with stolen designs.

Kelsi Trainor, an artist based in Melbourn, Australia, had her blanket designs plagiarised and sold on Temu.  She only found out when she saw someone at a festival wearing her design.

Another Australian artist, Tank, won a battle to have his copyrighted work removed from that site. Temu seems to be a breeding ground for plagiarism and copyright infringement.

From the perspective of the victims, Amazon also seems to make little effort to stop stolen works appearing on its marketplace. When shops selling plagiarised designs are taken down, they just start up again under a different name.

I’ve actually had this image sold as lawn flags on Amazon both .ca and .com it took me months to have the factory in China removed from that platform. They just kept relisting under a different name. – Shelley Lewis, regarding the corvid eating the sun photo mentoned above.

If We Work Together, We Can Win

When I’ve written about copyright theft before, it drew some defeatist attitudes stating that if we post stuff on the internet then we should accept that it will get stolen. I disagree. I believe that we should all start putting pressure on the police, our elected officials, the website hosts, and these huge companies to make it much easier to expunge the offenders. Thousands of people will read this article, and if we work together, we can help banish these criminals and pressure our law enforcement agencies to protect us better.

Encourage people to avoid low-quality websites like Temu that allow the sale of stolen designs, art, and photos.

Finally, put pressure on your elected officials to change the law so these platforms become vicariously liable for stolen artwork being advertised on their sites. Facebook wouldn’t be so lax about hosting these thieves if they were fined for it.

Let’s start a movement to show that our photographic work has value and that we won’t tolerate it being stolen.

If you know anyone whose work has been stolen by The Mind Circle, please ask them to report it to Cloudflare’s abuse page.

The survey exhibitions that galleries stage at year’s end, which usually consist of small works by all of the artists they represent, are frequently confused with the art-themed holiday markets, aimed primarily at gift-giving.

At their best, the gallery shows are much more than that. They reflect not only what the gallery has to offer but the gallery’s larger vision of what art is and what art should do.

I want to focus briefly on two examples, because the shows are so illustrative of this and so outstanding.

Whitespace does have an outright no-holds-barred holiday sale — with first-class works of art — in its smaller Whitespec project space, but the main gallery’s The December Show (through December 30) is very different from that.

The invitational show goes beyond artists represented by the gallery to include artists exhibited in any of Whitespace’s three exhibition spaces in the past year, and gallery owner Susan Bridges has curated a coherent exhibition out of the eyepopping diversity of styles and concerns that characterize the gallery’s artist roster. 

The show’s dynamic installation both reflects and reveals the gallery’s distinctive angle of vision. To take only one set of examples, two walls of this show contain work by artists from a range of ages, genders, ethnicities, project space and chosen artistic media.

A first glance reveals that each wall is unified by a visual rhythm of irregularly shaped and rectangular artworks arranged with repetitions and contrasts of palette, texture and other formal elements. This is an admirably complicated achievement in itself.

But that isn’t all that’s going on. Bridges stated that the grouping on one wall was “inspired by nature, magic, environmental and spiritual darkness,” while the other’s inspiration comes from “architecture, glitches, systems and weavings.” The other walls are sometimes united only by color and pattern, but more often encode similar rhythms of related thematic concerns.

Spalding Nix Fine Art is another example of galleries in which owners have expanded their gallery’s field of vision beyond its original focus. Although the 60-artist Ensemble (through January 12) deserves extended analysis, all I can offer in this column are two outstanding examples:

The first is Ensemble’s accompanying solo show. Blair Hobbs’ Radiant Matter is a suite of memorably archetypal mixed media artworks that arise from her thoughts while undergoing radiation treatments for breast cancer and transmute them into transcendent loveliness.

Ensemble offers a visually dramatic wall-spanning presentation of a body of work I have long hoped would be exhibited on this scale — a 48-piece grid of Tim Hunter’s Birds of America in Decline, small asphalt-on-cement silhouettes based on John James Audubon’s paintings in Birds of America.

Unlike the works in The December Show, which remain on display until the show’s end, this grid is itself something of an endangered species — part or all of it may be sold off the wall before Christmas.

This in itself illustrates the dilemmas of gallery owners, regardless of their idealistic range of vision. The legendary gallery owner Fay Gold once said, albeit with a tinge of regret, that her cutting-edge shows were not the Fay Gold Museum — she had to take into account the fact that the works were there to be sold. The same goes for even the most visionary of commercial spaces.

Nonprofit spaces have a different focus, even though they also usually offer work for sale.

At Center through January 6, Contemporary Portraits: David Clifton-Strawn and Modern Master: Pinky Bass illustrate how a gallery can be re-imagined to give birth to a new nonprofit space.

Housed in a multipurpose building co-owned by Thomas Swanston and Gail Foster, but an independently conceived entity, Center is described as “an inspiring hub designed for communal exploration of arts and culture, championing living artists and creating a space where visionary artworks come to life.”

These two shows by established boundary-pushing photographers with ties to the metro Atlanta art community are meant to stretch horizons, challenge expectations and encourage imaginative exploration within surrounding communities.

Bass’ photographs, placing elements of her own body in elemental settings, raise personal and conceptual issues in visually lyrical ways, and Clifton-Strawn’s equally lyrical photographs present male figures of various ethnicities and states of dress (or undress) in ways that range from emotionally powerful to gently comic. Both shows are worth seeking out in their Chattahoochee Hills location, close to the better known community of Serenbe.

::

Dr. Jerry Cullum’s reviews and essays have appeared in Art Papers magazine, Raw Vision, Art in America, ARTnews, International Review of African American Art and many other popular and scholarly journals. In 2020, he was awarded the Rabkin Prize for his outstanding contribution to arts journalism.