A.D. Coleman's response

Afterimage, July-August, 2004

A.D. Coleman's response:

Dear Bruno:

Carver has considerably misrepresented my letter. I am entitled to correct that. Also, she's refused to respond to any of the particular points therein. That needs to be made clear. Specifically:

Carver writes, "Coleman obviously wanted me to have written a different article, one focusing not on the law, but on the extent of the need to protect fine art photographers and their work." To the contrary, I proposed that the problem with the article as written and published is that its central section--devoted to photography--evidences so many flaws that it weakens her argument and makes her look foolish in the eyes of anyone knowledgeable about the field. This, in turn, undercuts the credibility of the article she wrote, and its usefulness as a tool. These flaws include:

-- a remarkable lack of annotated research (only two sources cited as references to photographic matters one of them Sontag's On Photography, a volume that does not deal in any significant way with the issues involved, the other a New York Times account of a single instance of alleged forgery);

-- consistent unfamiliarity with the standard usages of such basic terms as "original print" and "vintage print";

-- the frequent misuse of other terms pertaining to photographic print connoisseurship, historianship, and authentication;

-- factual untruths, among them the nonsensical assertion that "Traditionally, dating photographs has involved little more than studying the image for signs of age" and that such study mostly involves "look[ing] for the yellowing of the highlights and edge fading";

-- the unsubstantiated claim that "Forgery of photographs is a common problem." Notably, Carver does not respond in any way to any of those points, claiming instead a concern with some "broader landscape." Indeed, she does not rebut a single aspect of that critique.

In my letter, I specifically proposed that she strengthen this section of the article, in order to bring it up to the level of the opening and closing sections. Carver claims that "Coleman, of course, commented on what he knows best and, therefore did not comment on the underlying legal themes." This is simply untrue, as any reading of my letter will reveal. Therein I specifically state that "The paper's first half--with its overview and background history of droit moral and VARA, its comparison of the two, its analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each, its diagnosis of VARA's flaws and limitations--and its final recommendations and conclusion are solidly reasoned, well-supported, cogent, and valuable," and go on to say. "It's potentially a useful tool in the struggle to bring photographers and their works fully under the protection of VARA, and to expand the scope of VARA to conform it more closely to the far superior droit moral legislation that prevails elsewhere (and to which VARA was a response, even if a comparatively feeble one).

For all those reasons, far from wanting Carver to write a different article, I urged her to revise and improve this very one, and specifically to correct and strengthen its error-strewn and uninformed passages on photographic practice, photo historianship, the marketing of photos, and other relevant issues. Also, I haven't seen the accompanying letter from Prof. Reynolds, but there may be things in that to which I would feel a need to respond as well.