In the reading, “On the Rights of Molotov Man”, two artists debate on the boundary of copyright and plagiarism and how the context of the image can be changed through recreation. And the boundary is, in fact, very ambiguous. It’s true that in the field of art people should be given enough freedom on creating artwork, but the issue is not that simple. What’s more important is not just the copyright, but also, what’s the relationship between the artist and the content of their work. Especially for Susan as a photographer, what she did is “capture the moment” rather than creating something totally new, which makes this issue more complicated.
That leads to the question “Who owns the rights to this man’s struggle?”, there is no right answer for that. When the two party – painter Joy Garnett and photographer Susan Meiselas argue on the “ownership” or the right to reinterpret/ recreate the content of the image, a question that came to my mind is that why people seldom pay attention to the man in the photo? After all, it should be him who really experience the struggle. I do agree with the last sentence, “it would be a betrayal of him if I did not at least protest the diminishment of his act of defiance”. When the content of certain artwork is recreated for several times, the “content” itself – in this case – this man, also need to be considered. Besides, there is always an ongoing debate on how to balance the subject and the artist’s freedom.