“On the Rights of Molotov Man” tells the story of how the “Molotov Man” got widespread and decontextualized. Joy Garnett, a painter, saw the photo of a man throwing a Molotov cocktail on the Internet and made a painting based on that. After exhibiting it and putting it on the announcement card, Joy was asked to met the photographer Susan Meiselas for copyright. Then this painting was uploaded to the Internet. It got viral and there were so many people using it and converting it to other contexts and different forms. Susan never did see Joy neither did she collect any license fees.
After reading this I feel strongly related. In the age of the Internet, anything could be shared without the original context. Everybody gets to see it. But only a fragment of it. No one really has the time to appreciate the whole story behind this. People seems to be rushing all the time. And this got taken advantaged by the advertisers. They use images to manipulate people’s minds and trick them into buying their stuff. The ads are usually images and videos. They tend to be inflammatory and short, straight to people’s heart. But at the same time, there will be tiny words in the corner of the image giving you the context, which isn’t noticeable at all. The power of the images are so strong and manipulative that nobody seems to be able to escape.