In 1919 Willi Römer photographed a fight in Berlin during the occupation of
the press district by revolutionaries. We follow the path of the image from
being a document of an historic event to a digitalised commodity of Corbis,
one of the largest image archives and stock agencies (for fee-based
download). On Corbis' website the image has the (incorrect) title
Revolution in Berlin - Forces loyal to the Kaiser and Imperial
Government prepare to do battle against insurgents near end of World War
I.
Corbis was founded by Bill Gates in 1989. The company owns more than 70
million photographs and has moved its analog collection to an underground
storage space in a former limestone shaft in Pennsylvania. The company has
as well purchased large (private) archives containing historically
important photographs. Part of the collection was converted to a digital
format‚ inscribed with a watermark‚ and posted on the company's website.
This also happened with Römer's image. According to international law, the
use of the photo had already long been public domain. Even following the
sale and the removal of the watermark, the image exists under copyright due
to the embedded watermark.
Ines Schaber highlights the interrelation between the image as private
property and the writing of our common history. She exposes the potentially
threatening, monopolistic-capitalistic appropriating of pictorial memory.
On the original image she shows a letter that she wrote to Bill.