This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
The full set- plus a few photos I released last year- are in my public domain gallery. They have also been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons under a CC0 public domain license.
Why? January 1st is Public Domain Day. As I explained earlier this month:
...current copyright law ensures that most creative works, even from the most prolific of artists, simply disappear as though they never existed. The commercial portfolio of an artist is merely the tip of a large creative iceberg. My hard drive is full of photos that will never be processed. Like, for example, old photos that haven’t sold for a decade and images I’ve retired for various other reasons. Artists’ closets similarly hold piles of abandoned sketch books. Keeping these to ourselves and sealing our vaults with a legal barrier is dooming these pieces to permanent obscurity. Surely passing along older, forgotten, underappreciated works will breathe life into them that they would never have had otherwise.
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