From:
"Yossi Milo Gallery" <info@yossimilogallery.com Dear
Pedro, Yossi Milo
----- Original Message -----
From:
"Pedro Meyer" <pedro@zonezero.com Dear Yossi, In regard to your letter of February 5th, there seem to be some serious discrepancies according to what you write and the actual facts. Please allow me to point them out: First and foremost, we have never used Simen's work without his authorization. It was him who submitted to us his work for its publication almost a decade ago, I do not even have the pleasure of knowing him personally, so all our correspondence has been by email, of which we have all the records. It has been our policy since inception to be extremely diligent in how we use the work of photographers, being one myself, I am very conscious of the fact of using work solely under the authorization of the author. Where I believe a difference has arisen, is the day Simen no longer considered that his work made sense to be shown in ZoneZero, for what ever personal reasons he had. To his request at the time, I provided the following options and reasons, which I will be glad to share with you. All the work we have published, not only Simen's, but every single image we have ever shown, is maintained in the same manner as if on a printed page, in so far as creating a "history", of the evolvement of digital work over this past decade, and what we imagine will be the future as well. But aside building a history, we also see that for the large audience that we have, we remain having viewers for each exhibition that has ever been published, which in and of itself is of merit and value to everyone. So along comes Simen, asking, rudely the first time, and then more politely a year later, that his work should be taken down. I explained to him at the time, that we had invested, what to us were considerable efforts to put up his work and never asked of him any sort of remuneration in return. We know he obtained as a result of this exposure in ZoneZero, considerable benefits, in part because he wrote to us about this. That was all acceptable to us, and we were happy for him. His work deserved the recognition it obtained. I also explained to Simen, along with the above explanation, that in the search engines his name is already attached to the address at ZoneZero, so just deleting his work, would come up with an error message when someone tried to reach his work with us in ZoneZero, if we just deleted his work as he suggested. We not only think this is unacceptable towards our viewers, as we are very keen to have our site, as you can attest yourself, quite error free. I understand that Simen has precisely that in mind. But he is suggesting to do this at our expense in quite a selfish manner with not even the slightest appreciation for what we did for him, nor any respect for our part of the deal. Nor suggesting, for that matter, any positive solution, other than imposing his will as he sees fit to do. Imagine what would be of ZoneZero, if everyone just came back with similar expectations. I believe you in your own Gallery would have a similar response, if you felt that artists came and went without taking your efforts into account. We do not have a contract written with him of course, because I go on the assumption that among fellow artists there must be a degree of trust when dealing with such matters. Especially as we never had any financial gain, nor did we expect to, from presenting his work. It would be the first instance, among the more than 500 artists that we have shown, and among them, quite a few with a lot more important careers -so far- than what Simen Johan has had. So this isn't like we are a site that has a poor track record on such matters as author's rights, on the contrary, I could have an avalanche of artists defending our efforts at an emails notice. If it serves you in any way, please read, in our feedback section, what our reader audience has to say about ZoneZero, in unsolicited correspondence. This is aside from all the artists we have shown over the years. We have not become the largest and most respected web site for photography, by disregarding anyone, quite the contrary. So here are the options, as I see them, however I am open to read others solutions that make sense from your point of view. 1- We leave the work as it is, and we update (not delete previous ones) either texts or images, as you find it suitable. Our intention is to benefit the artist, not cause him hardship. 2- We delete the work, and in it is place we put up a factual report for the reason the work does not appear there, which unfortunately is going to be quite critical of Simen, simply based upon his own statements, I will let the unedited facts speak for themselves. I assume Yossi, that you are his advisers, given the fact that you have undertaken the effort to write in his name. Let me just tell you that your letter does not intimidate me in the very least with all your legal quotations. I could write one back, or for that matter from the Law firm that I have under retainer, and we could have ourselves a legal dance that would get you few results for all sorts of reasons. But that is not, as you have read above, the spirit of my letter, nor the way that all our interests are best served. So let us resolve this in a amicable and constructive way. I trust you will guide Simen in the right direction for this to happen. Best
regards |