The Honda car dealership here in Munich at the moment shows this poster. It seems that Eggleston’s image material (see the original here on the Washington Times website) was regarded insufficient for the intended purpose, so I guess a talented photoshop artist had to add blue sky and clouds as well as some warm tones to the grass under the tricycle.
Just thinking: Does Eggleston really know?
I would say, no. Since the rest of the poster is so badly done (design wise) I can’t imagine them having paid for the rights to use the photo.
Yes, that’s also my guess: For such a third-class ad they won’t pay the price this image is worth.
But if they’ve appropriated the image without permission they may end up paying a staggering price. “Wild Bill” might be more angry about the alteration than the presumed infringement. Either way there’s a potential monster infringement suit here given how unlikely it seems this could have been approved. It’s arguably his most iconic, “signature” picture. Yikes!
Carl, I’ve mailed Mike Johnston about this appropriation, and he got in contact with the Eggleston trust. So we’ll see. There’s a lot of questions in this like “who ordered the poster”, “who did the design”, “who did approve”. It is hard to imagine that this was done here in Germany as laws are strict and the designers usually aware of the implications.
Anyhow, I’m curious how this will continue.
I just did some google’ing “honda führerscheinzuschuss” – this came up and this slideshow and while at first my impression was that this all might be the work of “hey, my neighbour’s son has a computer and can make a poster for your shop” now I am thinking differently …
Martina, thanks for the research. I had a close look at the exif data of the Eggleston image and couldn’t believe what I saw: This image was sold through Corbis:
I still can’t believe that Eggleston on purpose sells such images through Corbis…
exif and iptc are intact – so … now I am really curious …
me, too. hm.