So a lot has happened lately and one of the things that have constantly popped up on my social feed has been the drama between the Mo Abudu/Creative team behind the movie ‘Oloture’ and Toborie Ovuorie, a journalist who alleges the movie is based on a sex trafficking report she investigated and authored back in 2014 (click here to read all about that).
The entire debacle has me wondering about intellectual property and the copy and paste culture that’s been popularized especially with the rise of the internet, especially in the photography space. It’s so easy to see and replicate that finding/creating something original seems more like a chore. It’s true that there’s “mostly’ no truly original idea and the except for the very few cases, every original is inspired from something that already is but the dawn of the internet has made it super easy to replicate people’s ideas and most often than not; not give the original originators any credit (that’s a lot of origin in one phrase).
I was having a conversation with my elder friend late yesterday and she said “… whilst nothing is ever truly original, if you’re going to copy someone’s idea, try to put your spin on it and make it your own and if you can’t, the very least you can do is give credit to the person you’re copying the original idea from.”
Getting inspired comes from various sources; there are movies, images from other photographers, art, nature, etc… the sources for ideas are endless but there are so many people looking to get to the top fast that no one ever really takes their time anymore to come up with original ideas and those who do come up with these ideas almost immediately have their ideas ripped from under their noses with due credit.
It is going to take a lot to combat the ‘copy and paste’ culture but it’s not impossible. For art to really thrive, artists need to have an individual voice (or photography style) and if you’re going to be inspired or are going to replicate someone’s work, we need to start making it a habit to give credit to whom credit is due.
