In the “On the Rights of Molotov Man”, painter Joy Garnett and photographer Susan Meselas debate the issues of copyright and how decontextualizing and “remixing” images affects meaning. Joy Garnett completed a painting based on a photograph that Susan Meiselas had taken and showed it in his exhibition. Garnett believes that the Molotov Man has become a symbol of culture, a part of the visual vocabulary, while Meiselas argues that specificity and context are all.
So, who owns the rights to this man’s struggle? Did anyone ask that man in person whether he agrees to the work to be reproduced? I think in this era of the internet, once you post something on the internet, it does not belong to you anymore but to a collective anyway. So the reproduced and decontextualized online is such a common phenomenon that many people doing it without even noticing the problem. As for me, before reading this, I never thought about this kind of situation. Just like when I was doing the first website comics project, some of the background image I just got it from the internet and didn’t even think whether the original author will allow me to do so without giving any credit to use it. The concept of copyright is very vague to me. After realizing this issue, although I believe images and symbols should be available for artists to remix and mash-up, I think they should consider giving credit to the original author or the people involved in the artwork.