Press Release

PRESS RELEASE

December, 20, 2011: Press Release: A Flashback detective has revealed how the photo of His Majesty Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden was manipulated

November 18, 2011: PRESS RELEASE: Flashback detectives awarded the new journalism award founded by Sveriges Radio

October 1, 2011: Stock agencies are undertaking investigations of image theft…

September 27, 2011: Behind ”images from the Internet” is an originator

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2011-09-27

Behind ”images from the Internet” is an originator

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60 affected originators / license owners, editors and other photographers. And some words about ”source: the Internet.”

Who cares about the originators and other affected photographers such as Brutus Östling?

We, digging members of the board Flashback.org forum, work at a non-profit basis to reveal Terje Hellesø’s photo manipulations.

We call out for media to highlight the original photographers and others that have suffered. Although it has been more than three weeks since the first manipulated photo was revealed – followed by Hellesø confessing the cheating – not much has been reported about the original photographers and others involved.

PhotoNatura announced on Friday September 23 that they will stop further publication of the book PhotoNatura#1. You, media, could easily have reported about this sudden and urgent decision as well as you did publish articles about how Hellesø perceived the situation. But you chose not to (with some exceptions). We think that the media has not had a balanced reporting about Hellesø.

Flashback’s investigators would like the discussion to be more about, for example, the thirty photographers concerned in this including the multi award-acclaimed nature photographer Brutus Östling. We blogged about the issue yesterday in “Flashback highlights the most affected: Brutus Östling and 60 more?”

When you write about how Terje Hellesø has made the manipulations you usually use the term “taking pictures from the Internet.” It sounds like how source references often were made in early 2000: “Source: Internet”.

Certainly one can understand that you in a great hurry in September 3 gave no priority to critically review the disclosures made by the Flashback detectives about the photo agency SuperStock and its photographer Stefan Meyers. But now, three weeks later, with the Flashback detectives revealing more copy & paste from other photo agencies, media is still reporting nothing.

Behind every image (which the media still persists to refer as “Source: Internet”) there is a photographer who has done the work and sometimes also a photo agency with image licenses.

Source Internet can be, for example, those authors / owners license:
Stefan Meyer – Germany, Jon Bowen – United Kingdom Superstock.com – USA (20 photos), Skåne Zoo archive – Sweden, Rune Broman, Sweden, Photographersdirect.com , Marina Strömbom – Sweden, Shutterstock.com , USA, Maurizio Lanini, Italy, Alamy.com/Stephen J. Krasemann, Ecosceneprints.com

Examples of victims, with image links .

Some of the authors / license owners have now begun to investigate the thefts of their pictures and the image manipulation.

Has the media covered this story in a balanced way of reporting? Have you at all highlighted the questions about the originators or about the affected editors and other photographers?

We think you can do better, especially after that we at terjadefoton.wordpress.com have provided you with all information needed, information we think you already have taken part of. This includes sources which can easily be double-checked by you. Crowdsourcing in all its glory, but shouldn’t all that is important to reveal be highlighted by another media than a blog with non-profit investigators?

You, media, should have the resources to highlight questions about copyright not only for music and film industry but also for photographic works.

It would be sad if Swedish photography and Swedish media (including specialist media) will be mentioned internationally (now or later) in terms of “Gosh how could this go on for so long within Swedish photography?” and “Swedish media writes page after page about Hellesø but don’t highlight the copyright issue”. It is also sad for those nature photographers who actually stand outside freezing their feet off not to be worthy of an article or a serious feature in media.

If you are unable to report any details yourself, please refer to: terjadefoton.wordpress.com

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Best regards

Flashback’s digging investigators (of Hellesö’s photo manipulations)
Contact:

terjadefoton.wordpress.com

terjadefoton@gmail.com