I recently discovered "Image Street", a company/shop in Mordialloc who sells reprints of old photos of Melbourne. Unfortunately the reprints start at $55 each. A little pricy for my book.
So I went hunting and found a couple of online shops selling similar photographs. The collections are huge and I'm in love.
Historic Photographs and...
Images of Yesteryear
I want them all. I want to get all of the photographs, then walk around the CBD taking "today" versions of them all. I want to publish them on a webpage and stare at them for months, drolling slightly out one side of my mouth.
But again the reprints are hugely expensive. Historic Photographs reprints start at $23 for an unmounted, 20cm x 25cm reprint on photographic paper. The examples they give on their website are tiny 200x160pixel thumbnails.
Images of Yesteryear charge a huge $45 for a 39cm x 24cm unmounted reprint.
Here's where I'm torn by my love of history and the realities of capitalism.
These huge collections of old photographcs are being kept and collected and preserved by people with an interest to keep copies of those photographs for decades to come. This is an excellent thing and should be encouraged.
However, at the same time, each photograph they take into their collection, regardless of it's age, is suddenly locked behind a 200x200 pixel, $25 commercial wall. Effectively the history of that photograph is lost. The photograph has suddenly become a product.
Personally, I would think a photograph taken in the 1920s or earlier should be well and truely out of copyright. It should be able to be freely copied and republished many times over to ensure it's continuation and preservation.
This probably is true of the majority of the collection of both Historic Photographs and Images of Yesteryear. However you could only legally copy from an original print of the photograph made around the time the photograph was made. I couldn't just purchase all of their photographs and then create my website...
I believe you couldn't purchase the photograph from either of these companies and then republish it because you would be copying their publication of the photograph, which has seperate copyright protection. Questions regarding this to both companies have not been replied to (yet).
Both of these companies request purchases of original prints. In doing so they're effectively purchasing the copyright (ie. the right to copy) that photograph. The right to sell it and recreate it. When it really should be in the Public Domain.
So in one way I love Historic Photographs and Images of Yesteryear for the huge work they're doing preserving these photographs for generations to come. On the otherhand I hate them for hiding the history I want to access behind a wall of money.
I understand they need to pay for their preservation efforts. I understand my annoyance is purely greed, the desire to have all of these photographs, right now, simply because I know they exist. But my reasons for wanting them are good.
I want to create a new piece of work from them that people can enjoy (ie. a website with then and now photographs of Melbourne). This is what Public Domain is all about. But I can't.