19-0288_851208-00-20-ITA
I got into a discussion recently with a young man who claims that he could never put a photograph on his wall which portrays a real person or persons whom he does not know. His logic was that if someone came to visit him and asked who the person is, that he wouldn’t know and would feel awkward.
A friend of mine, a photographer, traveled to Mongolia several years ago and took stunning portraits of people he met on the trip. He later hung several of these very intimate portraits on the walls of his Manhattan apartment. I wondered what would the subject of the photographs think if she or he ever wandered into this apartment and saw images of themselves adorning the interiors of someone they met only briefly.
Iouri, pictured here, was not a photographer, but an amazing painter. I became friends with Iouri when I was doing fashion photography in Milan, Italy in 1985. We were introduced to each other at a dinner party full of beautiful models. Iouri loved beauty, and he painted beauty. He frowned upon photography for its ability to capture un-beautiful aspects of people. His claim was that art should exist only to beautify, to celebrate the beautiful. Even though we enjoyed each other’s company, our brief friendship was contentious, as I was photographing almost incessantly, and he was by default the subject of many of my photographs. I don’t think he liked any photo I took of him.
A few months after I left Milan to return to my career as a Flight Attendant, Iouri wrote me imploring me to destroy the negatives I had of him. I could not oblige him, for I think most of the images I have of him are quite beautiful, and I could never destroy or delete any of the images I have taken. This also brings up another subject of interest to me, and that is ownership of the image. In most cases, a professional photographer claims authorship and copyright to an image, although permission is normally required from a recognizable subject to use the image in a commercial manner.
A judge in a recent New York State Court case dismissed a lawsuit by a man who saw a photograph of himself being sold for a large sum of money at an upscale NYC gallery, claiming that this type of “street photography” has significantly contributed to the rich history and culture of the city.
I generally would agree with this judgement, but in this particular case, where the subject has become aware of the situation, I feel that he should be fairly compensated.
I have lost touch with Iouri, and recent Googling has failed to find him, except on a dead end list of artists from an exhibit that took place a very long time ago. At the time when I knew him, Iouri had offered me to purchase any of this paintings for a ridiculously low price as he needed money to survive. I never did, and I can kick myself every time I think about it. Because his work was truly beautiful, and not because he has become famous, which evidently he has not.
Milano, Italy 08 December1985
(written November 22, 2006)
