Freelance photojournalist Mannie Garcia — an Oval Office regular for 19 years who shot the Obama portrait appropriated in Shepard Fairey’s Hope posters — is considering filing a civil rights lawsuit against the police in Maryland. When documenting a suspicious arrest, he was brutally assaulted by armed bullies in uniform, but that was just the beginning of his Kafkaesque nightmare. Read more »
In a searing blow to counter culture and the integrity of his career, graphic design stealing artist Shepard Fairey admitted he lied about the source of his presidential HOPE portrait in his ongoing legal dispute with the Associated Press. In a statement released Friday on his website, he discussed the blatant thievery and apologized, kinda: Read more »
Just as his Boston vandalism charges are wrapped up with a guilty plea, Shepard Fairey’s other legal problems are getting more complex. Mannie Garcia, the freelance photographer who shot the Barack Obama photo on which Fairey based his iconic “Hope” portrait, is jumping in the fray between the appropriating artist and the Associated Press. Garcia is challenging the AP’s lawsuit against Shepard Fairey for copyright infringement, filing a motion that he is the actual owner of rights to the photo. Read more »
In a recent statement, artist Shepard Fairey explains some reasoning behind his lawsuit against The Associated Press, which he hopes will protect him from copyright infringement claims over his “Hope” portrait of President Obama. The strange thing is that Fairey acknowledges referencing a photo by AP photographer Mannie Garcia, but claims it was “not the one being circulated by press.” However, that’s not true as James Danziger, a gallerist who showed Garcia’s referenced photo in an exhibit of Obama imagery, points out in an open letter to Fairey: Read more »
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