TWEEDLE-DEE DUM AND TWEEDLE-DEE DEE
Living in the Land of Nod
Trustin' their fate to the Hands of God
They pass by so silently
Tweedle-dee Dum and Tweedle-dee Dee
Well, they're going to the country, they're gonna retire
They're taking a streetcar named Desire
Looking in the window at the pecan pie
Lot of things they'd like they would never buy
Bob Dylan
I took this charming photograph in Troyeville, Jozi a couple of months ago. I originally planned to exhibit a series of photographs combining graffiti pieces with quotes or song lyrics I thought would go well with the images. The Odd Cafè seemed to be interested and I also thought of submitting the prints to “The Night of a Thousand Drawings” as a fundraiser for the Field of Dreams library project.
I posted a couple experimental images on my Flickr site asking my Flickr friends what they thought. Some of the graffito’s raised concerns about this as they felt it was using their creations for commercial purposes without their consent with them not getting some sort of compensation for the use of their work.
At first I naively thought they were totally off the wall (pun intended) as most the pieces appears in public spaces usually thrown up without the consent of whoever own the wall - therefore it was in the public domain. After some phone-calls and consulting with a copyright and trademark lawyer I interestingly discovered that it does not matter whether a graffiti piece is legal or not, the copyright vests in the artist for 15 years. It is a bit of a gray area as a lot of graffitos prefer to remain anonymous or is difficult to track down even if they’re signed or tagged the pieces in some way - but it's really not worth it to alienate people about an issue like this and I scrapped the idea.
I never intended to use the works for personal gain but it is immoral and wrong to use the artistic work created by these very talented outsider artists in print format without agreement. They, however, seem to have no problem with me posting it on Flickr or similar sites.
These works make powerful statements on their own or as a backdrop for street-life as Illustrated with Tweedle-dee Dum and Tweedle-dee Dee, twin brother originally from Zimbabwe returning from the shops with their mother.