In a post last year, plagiarism was the topic, citing the example of Steve Burdeny whose photographs had more than a casual resemblance to Chinese photographer Sze Tsung Leong’s images. A number of readers were unconvinced by my arguments and preferred to go with Burdeny’s explanation that the similarity came by happenstance. Others believed as I do that most likely Burdeny re-photographed ( or scanned) the images in question then with minimal alterations declared them as his own.

But often what might appear to be plagiarism or blatant borrowing is simply a coincidence of ideas: photographers often arrive at the same place unbeknown to one another which is not terribly surprising seeing that we swim in the same cultural ocean and are subject to similar influences. Thus the common phenomenon of movies on similar subjects appearing simultaneously as was the case a few years ago with films about Truman Capote. Other coincidences come about due to a shameless scramble to leap onto a passing bandwagon for example, the resurgence of the undead shuffling onto many a silver screen. But as discussed in another previous post (“August Sander & Company, September 2008) sometimes coincidences come from a deeper place where Jungian archetypes live and I gave as examples the numerous images of people floating in pools of water ( usually women) by such diverse artists as Andre Kertesz and Edward Weston. I was reminded of this again because recently I came across yet another example, this one by the photojournalist John Stanmeyer.

 

Andre Kertesz, Swimmer 1917

 

Edward Weston, Nude, 1939

 

 

 

In the same post I discussed artist Jon Haddock’s take on the phenomenon of internet pornography. Haddock’s imaginative leap was to remove the human beings from the porno scenes so that we were left with domestic backgrounds,  strangely demure, yet anonymous, like bedrooms in a model house. Jon Haddock alerted me to two other artists working in this vein: video artist Paul Pfeiffer and Matisse’s geat-granddaughter, Sophie Matisse who did a “Removal’ series, taking away the subjects from famous paintings such  Gustave Courbet’s “Origin of the World”.

 

Sophie Matisse: a “Removal” from Gustave Courbet’s “Origin of the World”

 

Jon Haddock, from the ISP series

 

Jon Haddock, from ISP series

 


Lately I came across another coincidental example of the same idea, this time by Laura Carton who considers herself a “media artist” rather than a photographer. In her book :”Stripped” Laura Carton downloaded a variety of pornographic images from the Internet and like Haddock, removed the human beings so that what remained were “the … fictions of domestic space, suburban melodramas, utopian ideals and fantasies.” In this case, unlike the Burdeny work with its uncanny resemblance to another photographer’s images, it’s the idea that’s similar, not the images particularly.

 

Laura Carton, from the book “Stripped”


Personally I regard ideas as floating through the air somewhat like dandelion seeds whereas images are anchored to the ground, pinned there by personality, specificity, style and form. An idea can appeal to a number of people simultaneously but the resulting images are unique, shaped by who we are. There’s nothing sadder than seeing an artist become protective about an idea because dig deep enough you’ll find someone else has had a similar thought, and often the second interpretation of an idea is more interesting than the first.

In fact, why not ‘cover’ ideas the way classical musicians interpret composers or pop singers cover songs? A favorite country song of mine, “There Stands the Glass” was first recorded by the plain-singing Webb Pierce ( but never the plain-dressing: Pierce wore more rhinestones than Liberace).


There stands the glass

Fill it to the brim

While my troubles go dim

It’s my first one today


Webb Pierce and his horned car

 

Subsequently the song has been covered by many: Van Morrison, Conway Twitty, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Loretta Lynn to name a few, and each artist brings his or her shadings to this mournful tune of addiction. But my favorite version is the one by Ted Hawkins, who sings There stands the Glass with pain in every syllable, recorded thirty years or more after Webb Pierce had his hit in 1953. So why not regard Laura Carton’s ‘Stripped’ as a cover version of Jon Haddock’s work? Or vice-versa; I’m not sure who came first and it doesn’t really matter; both takes on the subject deepen our understanding of contemporary culture.

 

Conway Twitty ‘covering’  Elvis

 

In fact, photographic concepts have often been ‘covered’; after Robert Frank’s The Americans came out in 1966, there have been many other versions, some as homages, many unacknowledged, and it is only a slight stretch to consider Robert Frank’s own work to be a visual equivalent of his friend Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road.

I have my own experience of the simultaneity of ideas; I once attempted series of collages of cows and pastoral landscapes and after I exhibited this work I came across an artist who was making her own cowscapes, Rachael Sudlow. The dandelion puff had alighted on us at the same time but the resulting images were only superficially similar.

 

 

Mark L. Power, Cowscape

 

 

Rachael Sudlow, Cowscape