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They Know No Shame

 [Updates below]

The above photo was taken by photojournalist Katie Falkenberg, who gave it this caption:

Erica and Rully Urias must bathe their daughter, Makayla, age 5, in contaminated water that is the color of tea. Their water has been tested and contains high levels of arsenic. The family attributes this water problem primarily to the blasting which they believe has disrupted the water table and cracked the casing in their well, allowing seepage of heavy metals into their water, and also to the runoff from the mountaintop removal sites surrounding their home. The coal company that mines the land around their home has never admitted to causing this problem, but they do supply the family with bottled water for drinking and cooking. Contaminated and colored water in has occurred in other coalfield communities as well where mountaintop mining is practiced.

The extraordinary and outrageous story behind that photo can be read here:  Obscenity: I Know it When I See It:

Now, that photo of Makayla Urias is a photograph of a naked child, a child exactly as naked as nine-year-old Kim Phuc was when, forty years ago, an Associated Press photographer snapped a picture of her, while she was running and crying from American napalm. You’ve probably seen that photo.It’s iconic. The photographer got a Pulitzer prize for taking it.

Yesterday, on the other hand, Maria was told that she would not be allowed to show that photo. It was not appropriate. She had the blessing of the child’s parents, but Republicans on the subcommittee alerted the capitol police (according to Spencer Pederson, a spokesman for GOP panel members), and after the hearing, the capitol police took Maria aside for questioning about “child pornography.”

I have an eerily similar experience to share.

In March 2008, I went to Passaic City, NJ to take some shots of contaminated toxic sites near schools.

I was investigating the NJ Schools Development Authority (SDA) and documenting how they spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars buying contaminated land, so they could put poor urban kids in schools on toxic sites.

I used the photos in this post: How the Other Half Schools 

I spoke to the Principal of Public School #9, told her what I was doing and why I was doing it, and got her permission to take photographs.

She suggested that when I was done with PS #9, that I go and take shots of a nearby preschool that was adjacent to a contaminated site, a former hospital.

Not only had the community lost a hospital for their residents, but now their children were being exposed to radioactive waste found during demolition of the hospital site – take a look at the kids’ school – in trailers, being exposed to radioactive dust:

Pre-school trailers can be seen in background. This brownfield site is a SDA construction site known as the “Dr. Robert Holster Education Complex”. A school was supposed to have been built there over 4 years ago but the site still sits vacant. A community hospital was torn down by SDA to build the school.

Now comes the part that I was reminded of by the West Virginia coal mining story and photo above.

Shortly after I got home from Passaic City and was eating dinner, a local West Amwell police officer knocked on my door.

He told me he had got a call from Passaic, complaining that I was taking photographs of young children and might be a pedophile!

Same bullshit – West Virginia to NJ. These scumbags know no shame.

[Update 2 – I just looked into the issues involved in that House hearing, titled: “Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources Oversight Hearing on the “Obama Administration’s Actions Against the Spruce Coal Mine: Canceled Permits, Lawsuits and Lost Jobs”  ( you can listen here).

I strongly urge anyone interested in the politics of environmental regulation and the economy to check it out. Republicans, the Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Manufacturers pulled out all the myths and spin about regulatory uncertainty.

I also read the US District Court’s opinion which found that EPA’s withdrawal of a previously approved disposal area specified in a USACE dredge permit was not authorized by the Clean Water Act. The mining corporation lawyers challenged EPA under 14 counts – after the oral hearing, in an unusual move (a Minute Order), the judge herself raised the issue and requested briefs on whether the EPA had the authority under the CWA, and issue not even raised by the mining company lawyers!  Talk about activist judges! And this was an Obama nominee! I put up a $10 bet that she gets reversed!

Update 1- the photographer who took the above bathtub photo, Ms. Falkenberg, sent me the following note to take exception to my posting of her work:

Dear Mr. Wolfe,

I was pointed to your website today about your post, “They Know no Shame.” I am the photographer who took the photo of the child in the bathtub that you posted. Respectfully, I ask that you please take down the photograph from your site. You are more than welcome, of course, to link to the photo on my site, but those photographs are copyrighted and may not be published without prior permission.

Thank you for your understanding.

Most sincerely,

Katie Falkenberg

Unfortunately, as a matter of principle, I was forced to refuse that request with the following reply, which notes fair use and attribution:,

Hi Katie:

First of all, I am a photographer too, so understand the artistic impulse. But I welcome any posting of my work, with attribution (and a link).

I learned of your work via a link in a post about political issues – e.g testimony before Congress.

I used your work -WITH express attribution and link – in a public interest post regarding broader but related issues.

As such, I think I respected your work, credited your work, and posted it under fair use doctrine.

In response to your concerns, I will provide a link to your website.

But I wil keep that photo as I posted it.

Sorry, if that is not satisfactory.

Wolfe

So please visit Ms. Falkenberg’s website and show her some love.

(I wonder if she had the same problem with Zunguzungu, who’s linked to her website? Or Digby, who linked to both.)

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  1. June 4th, 2012 at 20:03 | #1

    Wolfe,

    Aaron at Zunguzungu did NOT post the photo without permission. He and Digby both followed Katie Falkenberg’s protocol and instead linked to the site. I fail to see how your status as a photographer makes you think it’s okay to disdainfully reuse the copyrighted photo without permission, even after being asked not to do so. So what did you do, take a screen shot? Because the site uses a flashplayer to display her work, rather than jpegs.

    And yes, I know all about fair use. But I still opt to seek permission. That’s why I contacted Falkenberg before posting and published a different image (a gallery pr shot) with my post when she asked me not to use her photo. Even then I let Falkenberg know I would take it down completely, if she wished. See: http://bethwellington.blogspot.com/2012/06/more-coal-porn.html

    You might want to consider the ramifications for loss of income in this article about pinterest…
    http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/03/18/a-flaw-in-pinterests-potential-fair-use-argument/

    Of course, you’ve got company on Tumbler, where the photo’s been used without permission or payment by the likes of NewsWeek and Daily Beast, seemingly started by LPV Magazine.

  2. June 4th, 2012 at 20:18 | #2

    @Beth Wellington

    Beth – thanks for your views. While I asked for them, I don’t agree.

    My “status” (your word) as a photographer informs my judgement about creativity and ownership. The creative act is the source of reward, not income.

    But even in the revenue maximizing domain, free distribution via posts enhances exposure, and, in the one run, develops a larger audience for an artists works. So, your traditional view of copyright is just ass backwards, in my view, from both artistic and revenue perspectives.

    While I differ with them, I completely respect your (and others) decisions to recognize Falkenberg’s protocol and requests. But that is done as a matter of your own personal courtesy and ethics, and is not a binding social control or binding on me, morally or legally.

    Furthermore, my site is not a revenue producer – there is no commercial interest here. SO please, don’t group me with Newsweek and Daily Beast.

    Last, in terms of my “status” in this debate, I am not only a photographer with my own personal creative ethics and analytical views of art and fair use, but I work on the public policy issues Falkenberg’s photographs relate to and have had similar experiences.

    Her photo was merely a prop around which to rehash making those arguments.

  3. Jeff
    June 6th, 2012 at 12:11 | #3

    Is the edit to your post regarding the usage of Katie’s photo truly necesssary? You have expended an equal portion of space trying to prove that you are justified in using someones work against their express wishes (read: being kind of a jerk regardless of legality.) as addressing the point of this post that you borrowed the photo to address. We dont need to read your email exchange, you’re undermining a serious issue with unwarranted attention on a petty internet spat.

  4. June 6th, 2012 at 12:21 | #4

    @Jeff

    Jeff – you may see this as a “petty spat”, but I take the concepts of trademark and fair use very seriously.

    And, agin, while you may call me “a jerk”, I don’t like to be told to take down stuff I posted after serious thought and for a good reason.

  5. Bill Bobb
    August 1st, 2012 at 08:06 | #5

    Wolfe, you are a jerk and should have both the courtesy and common respect to take down any artistic work that the artist has specifically requested you to do so. Read through the Fair Use sections posted by the Copyright Office on their website and you will find that attribution is no substitute for the owner’s permission and it is strongly recommended that you do not post when an owner requests. I hope you are taken to court on this and hope you lose, for the sake of all artists.

  6. August 1st, 2012 at 08:21 | #6

    @Bill Bobb

    Thanks for you comment Bill.

    I disagree, obviously.

    Once art is injected into the political arena and used for political purposes, all bets are off and its fair use (for non-commercial and public interest uses in a larger context).

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