| dc.description.abstract | This research examines the impact of copyright law on academic research, publication, and teaching of photography in the UK. It provides the findings of the semi-structured interviews conducted with UK-based photography scholars that demonstrate the permeation of a permissions culture into photography scholarship. This thesis explains copyright’s role in the establishment of this culture by analysing the findings through the lenses of legal theory and photography theory. Photography scholars navigate a complex industry to access photographs and reproduce them for academic uses. The industry consists of multiple image sources such as image libraries, galleries, libraries, archives, museums, photographers, photographer estates, and private collectors, along with other important stakeholders such as publishers and higher education institutions that affect the reproductions of photographs in scholarly activities through their re-use policies. This study illustrates the asymmetrical dependencies among these stakeholders and photography scholars along with the limited awareness of the scope of permitted acts under copyright law among this community, both of which contribute to the formation of norms and practices that subject photographs’ re-use and circulation to the tight control of image sources. Consequently, the fieldwork data reveals a strong permissions culture, leading scholars to cut photographs out of their research activities, abandon projects, and avoid research fields. The copyright discourse has seen a rise in qualitative empirical studies providing insights into the law’s changing role among industries and communities. This research fits within that analytical framework. It provides and analyses novel empirical data on the re-use of photography in academic contexts and identifies problematic aspects of the licensing process that prevails under the permissions culture. Finally, this thesis provides discursive suggestions for making exceptions more accessible. | en_US |
