There has been some recent discussion on the Alamy forum about ‘found’ images and the difficulty of tracing who took them. Copyright lasts for 70 years after the death of the photographer so this issue is a pressing one for this of us who are fascinated by old image collections. These ‘lost’ images are legally termed Orphan Works.
Reference was made to the Anonymous Project created by Lee Shulman which has acquired an amazing collection of slides and which has received lots of publicity through magazine articles and books. They list the following media organisations that have written about and used images from the Anonymous Project:
BBC, The Guardian, Hoxton Press, Daily Mail, Washington Post, Le Monde, The Independent, CNN, The Telegraph, Figaro, New York Times, Evening Standard, British Journal of Photography, Hermes, Liberation, New York Magazine, Lens Culture
This made me curious. Have I got things wrong about copyright? These world-famous publishers have used Anonymous images and surely they know what they are doing?
I decided to write to Lee to see what I am missing and if he replies I will share it here on this blog. I would also welcome comments below to discuss this thorny conundrum. We come across amazing old images which the world deserves to see – to what extent should the laws of copyright restrict us? Because copyright does impose restrictions, but at the same it provides vital protections to all photographers.
My email to Lee Shulman, Anonymous Project :
Hello Lee,
I have also been working on digitising old slides. It started as a Covid project in 2010 when I could not do much of my own photography.
I now have over 6000 ‘saved’ images on my website.
https://www.geographyphotos.com/gallery-collection/Old-Film-Slide-Collections/C0000S3ijXnOmzNA
In each case I have had to trace the photographer’s family and get copyright transfer or, falling short of that, permission from them to copy the work.
As you will know copyright lasts for 70 years and does not automatically pass with the slide/negative.
In many cases I have unfortunately been unable to find the family, or to get them to agree to me using the images. So then I have not been able to use the images.
My question is how you overcome this problem since by definition all the images you use are anonymous and without copyright clearance.
My enquiries with the Orphan Works section of the IPO in the UK led me to being told that I would have to pay a fee for each non-copyright image I put on my website and that I would be unable to sell any rights to such images – not even an admin or copy fee. A prospective publisher would have to conduct due diligence, pay a fee to the IPO, and register each work with them.
I am curious how you get around these restrictions and publish the images around the world in magazines, books and through print sales.
Is there something that I am missing?
I write a blog and would like to do a post about Anonymous and use your reply as part of it.
Regards,
Ian Murray
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