Controversial Project Viewed at Chicago Gallery

Today I made a trip to Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago, Illinois. While viewing the work, I came across a project by Carson Davis Brown, called Ctrl+ P. Right away that raised a red flag. These images are taken from the internet and printed and stuck on a gallery wall with prices ranging from $175- $3000.

Now  the real concerning thing about this is, is it an infringement of copyright? In the statement explaining the project, it says that these images were taken from the internet and used for this show.....so does that mean that there was no permission granted from the original photographer for Carson Davis Brown to use this work for his own show???

If this is the case, wouldn't this be considered copyright infringement?

Unless the original photographer did not copyright their images.

Now if it turns out that Carson Davis Brown did get permission from the original photographers, it may be nice if he would have acknowledged them.

Controversy #1.

The next controversial thing about this project is the photographs with brand names in them such as

008, 2014
044, 2014
062, 2014
064, 2014

Would Carson Davis Brown need permission from those name brand companies to put these in a show?

Would the original photographers need permission from those name brands to put those images on the internet?

Controversy #2.


This perhaps is the most controversial parts of photography. If you are going to take someone else's work, how are you going to make it your own so that it isn't so much of a copyright infringement?

Below you can view and read more about Carson Davis Brown's project Ctrl+P.

 Ctrl + P Web Page