The typical story in this short essay touches on various ideas like originality, intellectual property and the legitimacy of work borrowing. Meiselas took the photograph which is later used in a painting made by Garnett. So Garnett is sued of violating the right of intellectual property of Meisela. They actually take different attitudes toward this matter. Meisela believes she “owns” the photo because she embedded meanings to it. She is the original creator of that photo. While on the other hand, Garnett insists that the specific content of artwork belongs to no one. Different people can have different understandings. So we should spare room for creativity and freedom.
It has just been discussed in the other essay that language may be just a continuous work of repetition and recycling. But is that possible if we create more music or paintings rather than get inspiration from others’ work? All kinds of artwork may be of high flexibility and we may have more opportunities to always add novel elements to them. Therefore, it’s necessary to protect the intellectual property of the creator of artworks and give credit to their brilliant ideas.