Law Commons^™

In The Language Of Pictures: How Copyright Law Fails To Adequately Account For Photography, Teresa M. Bruce

Teresa M Bruce

Photography has bewildered humanity since its inception. At first, the public viewed it solely as science. Later, people deemed it "art," but only insofar as it was "pictorial" and imitated painting, drawing, and printmaking: in other words, photographs were art only if they looked un-photographic. Eventually, however, the art world rejected pictorialism in favor of "straight photography," an aesthetic that exploits the camera's distinctive qualities and, in particular, its realism. This is the aesthetic that prevails today. Unfortunately, pictorialism still influences copyright law. It adheres in the fact-expression dichotomy, which differentiates facts, which are free to all, from expression, which …