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Award-winning photographer admits to plagiarism
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When the mentor of a girl in a brothel requested not to be photographed, Souvid Datta decided to Photoshop the subject of Mark’s original piece into his work to see what it could look like had the mentor agreed. (Shutterstock/File)
O
n Wednesday, PetaPixel found that award-winning photographer Souvid Datta had likely plagiarized a photo originally taken by documentary photographer Mary Ellen Mark.
Now, Datta has admitted to copying and pasting from the 1978 photo and he explained that the original photo was taken when he went to India to document sex industry violence.
When the mentor of a girl in a brothel requested not to be photographed, Datta decided to Photoshop the subject of Mark’s original piece into his work to see what it could look like had the mentor agreed.
“The damning mistake came in uploading that image onto my blog,” Datta told Time in an interview. “I did this without accreditation or acknowledgment that it had been tampered with and that it included elements of [Mark’s] image. I wrote the caption as if Asma herself was in this image, not a woman from someone else’s work. In effect, I lied.”
Read also: Russian model slammed for dangerous photography stunt at Dubai skyscraper
DUDE… What was he thinking? Photographer Souvid Datta Appears to Have Plagiarized Mary Ellen Mark https://t.co/nVbj30sMu6 pic.twitter.com/5zXtuoz5Vl
— Melissa Lyttle (@melissalyttle) May 3, 2017
Datta went on to admit that during this time, he had cloned and combined photos taken by others into works of his own, explaining that the promise of “validation and exposure” was what caused him to lie about the doctored photo.
The National Press Photographers Association issued a statement, saying, “We believe what Datta did is inexcusable and not only betrays the trust that others placed in him but in an age of 'fake news' undermines the public trust in our profession.”
Datta was also recently involved in another controversy, when one of his pictures of an underage sex trafficking victim was used to promote a photography contest. (sul/kes)
