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Copy paste photography: Souvid Datta accepts he introduced alien elements in his works

In a recent interview with TIME magazine, he conceded that he had used a part of Magnum photographer Mary Ellen Mark's photograph and integrated it into his own work

Award-winning photographer Souvid Datta, who is the recipient of Magnum 30 Under 30, and several prestigious grants including the Pulitzer Center Grant (2016) and Getty Grant for Editorial Photography (2015), has admitted that he was responsible for plagiarising certain photographers’ works – cloning and stitching alien elements into his own photographs.

Souvid Datta, considered to be an immensely talented photographer, catapulted to fame in his early 20s. However, in a recent interview with TIME magazine, he conceded that he had used a part of Magnum photographer Mary Ellen Mark’s photograph and integrated it into his own work for a series on the sex workers in Sonagachi, Kolkata.

Mark, a celebrated photographer, grounded her work in focusing on the marginalised, the minorities, the ostracised – those who lived at the peripheries of society. Her lens showed vulnerabilities of certain people, in an extremely humane light. From depicting gun-wielding children to women sex workers in India, Mark has been a revered photographer, who has inspired and influenced many.

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Mary Ellen Mark. Source: Waterjunebug/Wikimedia Commons

Back in 2014, Shreya Bhat, a social worker who works with women sex workers, came across an eerie anomaly in one of Souvid Datta’s photographs belonging to his series titled In the Shadows of Kolkata, which gave visual insights into the lives of sex workers, their children, and the perpetration of violence within the community, in the red light district of Sonagachi. In the photograph, Datta cut out a character from one of Mark’s photographs (belonging to her iconic series titled Falkland Road), and stitched it into his own. Falkland Road, published in the 1970s, chronicled the lives of women sex workers in red-light areas in India.

In 2014, Datta’s series gained acclaim across the globe. In 2017, the series has resurfaced into the limelight, however now for controversial reasons. In an interview with TIME magazine, Datta gave his reasoning for plagiarising. TIME reported that he cloned a subject from Mark’s photograph, pasted it in his photo and published it to his blog without a disclaimer. That moment was, he now reflects, “the damning mistake”. The article further mentions that Datta manipulted other images as well, and “appropriated photos” from Daniele Volpe, Hazel Thompson and Raul Irani, and “lied in order to conceal those actions”.

Since the controversy, Datta has taken down his website, Facebook, twitter and Instagram accounts. His profiles at respected photography websites like LensCulture have been suspended due to “ethical concerns”. The Visura team, who gave him a grant, publicly condemned Datta’s work ethic, stating that it did not support such behaviour.

This is not the first time photographers have been caught and called out for altering photographs. From Magnum photographers such as Steve McCurry to World Press Photo Award winners like Giovanni Troilo – many have had their professional histories mired in controversies.

First uploaded on: 05-05-2017 at 12:05 IST
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