SIUSLAW NEWS ❚ SATURDAY, JANUARY 13, 2018
Business
from 1A
Shawn continued, “And a
camera on them at all times.
When you see a picture of
something, there’s going to be
a hundred different versions of
that picture at every single
angle that everybody has their
phones out. Everybody thinks
they’re a photographer. For
news, it’s great, but it does
change the way pictures are
taken now. Pictures aren’t spe-
cial anymore.”
This begs the question, are
any photographs special in
the way Monroe’s are?
Particularly when it comes to
the photograph hanging on the
wall?
“Does the digital image
cheapen the overall value of
the image because of its com-
monality and availability?”
Jones asked. He is one of two
restoration technicians for the
business. “The printed image
is like a substantial thing, an
object. A piece of art. The dig-
ital screen is transitory. Does
the general consumer want
more than just a transitory
image?”
This is something Shawn
could answer.
“I collected baseball cards,
but they’ve changed where
there’s also digital cards that
you trade and collect,” he said.
“Real money is paid for these
rare digital baseball cards. To
my son, that digital baseball
card means the same, or more,
than the old-fashioned card-
board card he has in his hand.
“The new generation might
not care about a print on the
wall. They care more about the
picture on the phone.”
Online digital images repre-
sent one of the biggest battle-
grounds for The Archives.
While it frequently put its pho-
tographs online for promotion
and educational purposes,
unauthorized uploads can
become a huge drain on its
resources, both through loss of
sales and hunting down
images.
“Policing is an ongoing
nightmare,” Greene said.
“Asia is notorious with
Alibaba.”
Alibaba is China’s version
of Ebay, combined with
Amazon.com. It also sells
knock-off prints of Milton’s
work.
“Every time I go there, I’ll
spend a whole day,” Greene
said. “I’ll find at least 150
infringements, but I can’t do
anything about it. Alibaba
won’t take them down. You
can’t go after them like you
can Ebay, because that’s pro-
tected by American law. The
law in China is that they don’t
care about copyright infringe-
ment and intellectual proper-
ty.”
If Alibaba retailers sell the
unauthorized prints outside
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China, Greene could use inter-
national copyright infringe-
ment laws against the sellers.
“But if you’re making it in
China and selling it in China,
it’s a closed market. And I see
Marilyn Monroe prints in lots,
minimum orders of 140, for
$45 a piece. What am I going
to do?” he asked.
Those struggles focus on
physical prints sold online. But
what about photographs that
are downloaded to websites?
The Digital Millennium
Copyright Act of 1998 was
supposed to protect artists
from having their work posted
without permission. The act
allowed for media to be used
for education or information,
but it barred websites from
using copyrighted work for
commercial purposes. That
was the intent, anyway.
For example, an informa-
tional Google search of
Monroe pulls up thousands of
online photographs of the icon.
But when the picture is clicked
on?
“A company’s website is
embedded into it. You click on
it, and it’s a hardware store. Or
it’s selling sweaters,” Greene
said. “There was a guy who
had over 100 YouTube videos
with Milton’s pictures in it all
put to music. It was the worst
music I ever heard, which
offended me even more.”
The Archives had that video
pulled, but as one goes down,
dozens more pop up.
“There’s only so much you
can do,” Shawn said. “You
have to do the cost/benefit
analysis. Is this worth my
time? So, you try to pick the
most egregious ones.”
That’s not to say that The
Archives is against all uses of
Milton’s images.
“We’re very close with the
Marilyn fan base,” Greene
said. “That’s been very impor-
tant to us. All those fan sites
that people have, use our pic-
tures with our graces.”
All they ask is that those
websites give credit to Milton
and The Archives, and people
S TEVE E ARNSHAW , P RINCIPAL B ROKER
are generally more than happy
to do it.
Another problem is artists
stealing Milton’s work and
incorporating it into their own
art, what Greene calls “deriva-
tive work.” One of the greatest
offenders is Richard Prince, a
visual artist who sets photos
— most of which are not his
own — into frames similar to
those seen on Instagram.
“This guy is a scumbag,”
Greene said.
Shawn explained.
“Basically, he did an exhibi-
tion of all these Instagram
photos. It’s just the Instagram
posts with the comments. And
he sells them as his art.”
Instagram is an online appli-
cation where users can share
pictures. The problem with
Instagram, Greene believes, is
that once someone puts a pho-
tograph on the application, the
photographer gives up their
copyright. While this may be
acceptable when photogra-
phers put their own images on
the application, people are put-
ting other works on the site,
like Milton’s.
“Prince has taken the own-
ership of photographs because
it was on Instagram,” Shawn
said. “He thinks he’s manipu-
lating them enough to get out-
side the law. And he basically
dared you to sue him. One
photographer was not happy
about it. Somebody put a pic-
ture of his print on Instagram.
And so, he’s trying to say that,
‘I didn’t put it, somebody else
did. So, I didn’t give this per-
mission.’ That’s the angle he’s
going after.”
“Am I going to put Milton’s
pictures
on
Instagram?”
Greene asked. “No way.”
These issues lead The
Archives to wonder what the
future of photography is in an
online world. The question
comes up with a company
named Corbis.
“Bill Gates is the founder of
Corbis,” Greene said. “He
believed everybody was going
to have flat screens on their
walls instead of framed pic-
tures, and they would put digi-
tal imagery in. And they want-
ed multiple images to be able
to stream to change out your
artwork. When you think
about it, streaming, like
Netflix, is most of the way
people entertain themselves
now.”
But does digital imagery
trump the tactile nature of
printed medium?
“There’s a certain level of
permanence with having a
good quality print on the
wall,” Welles, The Archives’
other restoration technician,
said. “Whereas, if you’re just
looking at something on a
screen, you’re talking about
technology that is always
changing. The prints we’re
making here are good for sev-
eral generations before there’s
degradation. I think there’s
that aspect of it that will con-
tinue to exist. At some point,
we’ll get through the science
fiction of it all, with walls that
are images.”
And there may be a back-
lash to the technology, which
has yet to fully catch on with
the public.
“You’re going to see a lot of
hipsters and young people
wanting to get back into the
darkroom,” Shawn said.
“There’s always going to be
people that want to put a print
on the wall.”
While that technology’s
future is still to be written,
Corbis did create a fundamen-
tal shift in how photographs
are purchased and distributed.
Corbis, which was later
bought out by competitor
Getty Images, began purchas-
ing the rights to huge collec-
tions of photographs for the
project. It also used the collec-
tions to sell to traditional print
publications.
“They became the Walmart
of licensing and they pushed
the photographers out of the
business, as far as the price
and the value of buying pho-
tography to put in magazines,”
Greene said. “They made deals
for a lump sum, annual fee.
D ESIREE J OHNSON , B ROKER
People Magazine will pay
$25,000 to Corbis. And they’ll
have access to millions of
images throughout the year at
no additional expense. And it
makes sense if you’re going to
be a publication that needs that
imagery. If you break it down,
you’re paying $100 a picture.
So, when they come to people
like us, where we’re asking
$5,000 for a picture or $1,500
for a page, they say, I’ll pay
you $150. Well, that’s fine, but
if you want an historic picture
of Marilyn Monroe, you’re
going to have to pay more”.
Greene said the business has
both gotten harder and
changed since he created The
Archives.
“Even with the release of
brand new pictures in our
book, I had to surrender to get-
ting publicity versus getting
the money. The exposure
became more important than
that money,” Greene said.
“The Essential Marilyn”
costs $65 retail. If The
Archives was to sell the prints
individually, it could have
made hundreds of thousands of
dollars.
“I’m happy to report that we
just got our first royalty state-
ment, and we have paid for the
printing of the book already,
which we expected it would
take 6 months to a year,”
Greene said.
However, that’s through the
sales of a book. How do the
prints that The Archives create
make it out to the general pub-
lic? According to Greene,
there’s two primary areas
where his fine art prints are
used.
“There’s the sale of fine art
photography in a gallery,”
Greene said. “The other place
is exhibitions, where the focus
is to show the work, not to pur-
chase the work. We’re doing a
show next week down in
Beverly Hills. We have 15
pieces down there. These
prints vary between $7,000 to
$15,000 a piece.”
See
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