Appropriation or just a coincidence?
May. 30th, 2009 04:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ferrumaeternumA couple days ago, this was posted in two tattoo communities I’ve also posted my tattoo work and comment occasionally in. As she said in the post, hers was started two months ago while I started getting work on mine over two years ago. My backpiece is also archived in BME, the biggest body modification site on the web. Lane also has pictures of my backpiece on his MySpace, Facebook, and occasionally on his shop’s website. There has been drama from time to time in these LJ communities where someone has blatantly copied another’s custom tattoo. Sometimes it was simply the idea and others, it was the exact design and placement. The funny thing is the copies never have been as good as the originals. I know it’s not exactly like mine and the artist who did it doesn’t know shit about perspective and the whole composition, lighting, and shading aren’t very well rendered. Still, I don’t like the idea of someone else taking my idea without permission.
In the hundreds of thousands of tattoos I’ve seen, I’ve only once come across someone who also had a peacock and cherry blossom tree. She is from Sweden and the design is completely different and in black and gray, so I didn’t even think twice about it. But this girl has the cherry blossom tree with falling petals, an art nouveau positioned peacock, and a lantern hanging from the tree. Although the origin of the lantern and cherry blossom tree are Japanese, the peacock isn’t, so you can’t simply say that it’s all Japanese-inspired and therefore a total coincidence. All of these elements are also basically placed in the same areas and in relation to each other as mine are on my back.
I’ve always been aware that this could happen when posting pictures to the Internet, but I always figured if it happened, someone would try to directly copy the design. In that case, Lane could take legal action against them; since that is his distinct style they would be stealing. In this case, the stylization is different. Even if she never saw my backpiece, at least I still get credit for having it done first.
Am I just being paranoid and unjustly accusing them? Is the content of my tattoo so generic that it is simply a coincidence? I don’t know, and I am not going to directly question this person, since I think either way, it will just lead to more problems. I haven’t posted my backpiece to these communities after I started getting the peacock worked on, and when I do after it’s finished, I had better not be the one accused of copying.
In the hundreds of thousands of tattoos I’ve seen, I’ve only once come across someone who also had a peacock and cherry blossom tree. She is from Sweden and the design is completely different and in black and gray, so I didn’t even think twice about it. But this girl has the cherry blossom tree with falling petals, an art nouveau positioned peacock, and a lantern hanging from the tree. Although the origin of the lantern and cherry blossom tree are Japanese, the peacock isn’t, so you can’t simply say that it’s all Japanese-inspired and therefore a total coincidence. All of these elements are also basically placed in the same areas and in relation to each other as mine are on my back.
I’ve always been aware that this could happen when posting pictures to the Internet, but I always figured if it happened, someone would try to directly copy the design. In that case, Lane could take legal action against them; since that is his distinct style they would be stealing. In this case, the stylization is different. Even if she never saw my backpiece, at least I still get credit for having it done first.
Am I just being paranoid and unjustly accusing them? Is the content of my tattoo so generic that it is simply a coincidence? I don’t know, and I am not going to directly question this person, since I think either way, it will just lead to more problems. I haven’t posted my backpiece to these communities after I started getting the peacock worked on, and when I do after it’s finished, I had better not be the one accused of copying.
