I am currently taking a course called “Introduction to Media Criticism” to complete my MCC minor. In class today, I was lucky enough to be the first student to present a class lecture. Our topic for the class was “Image, Power, and Politics”. The chapter comes from the textbook “The power Of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture”. The chapter was about how an image is produced, how we assign value to images, how technology has changed these values, and image icons. After the chapter, we were asked to read an article called, “On The Right of Molotov Man: The Appropriation and the art of context” by Joy Garnett and Susan Meislas (which can be found on our Delicious page). For the discussion in class, the point of the article was to talk about how when an image is taken out of context the meaning changes and also how artist’s intent can be changed because of the digital culture we live in.
The article is about an artist named Joy Garnett who started a project about “the human figure in extreme” and that the project was based out “frustration and anger”. Garnett’s process was to look for images on the computer that spoke to her. She then took these images and placed them in a folder on her desktop and let them sit, so she could forget where she found the images. After months of going through this process, she decided to picture her images. Her main prize image was of a man throwing a Molotov cocktail. This image became the main piece in the exhibition that was produced under this project and also the main painting for marketing and advertising. Garnett was contacted by a friend asking if Garnett knew that this image was from a photograph created by Susan Meisalas and if Garnett planned on contacting Meisalas about the use of the image. After the exhibit closed, Garnett received a letter from Meisalas’ lawyer claiming Garnett was “sailing under the flag of piracy”. The article continues with Garnett’s side of the story and then moves into Meiselas’ side of the story. Meiselas’ side of the story seems to show that she was more concerned about the fact that the struggle of the man in the photo and the context in which was taken was stripped away by Garnett using the image. I found it very interesting that Meisalas was not concerned about the monetary gain of the copyright infringement, but more about the credit that was necessary to the human in the image. I think that sometimes, our reason for producing art can be muddled by society’s ideologies based on money and monetary advances rather than the hopeful reason to produce art; to inspire and to create conversation. I was fascinated by the article and I hope you all are as well!

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