Paulina Porizkova has made the decision to step away from sharing professional photos to her Instagram for a while. On August 1, 2023, the 58-year-old supermodel posted an unfiltered selfie, which was taken of her first thing in the morning, to her profile and gave her fans some insight into her reasoning why.
Apparently, she made a mistake that she didn't realize would cost her in the long run. But moving forward, her intentions of only posting nonprofessional photos are to hopefully save her from making the same mistake twice.
"One reason I’ve been posting a lot of self generated content lately is because I’m terrified," she started off the post. "Of what, you may wonder? Of getting sued. Again."
"Here’s the deal," she continued. "Last year, while posting about the horrors in Ukraine, I used photos I found on IG to illustrate the story. Six months later, I was slapped with a lawsuit by a lawfirm on the behalf of one photographer. I had used his photo without his approval or without paying for usage."
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"Until that point, I didn’t even realize this was a thing- reposting photos from the internet being illegal," the post went on. "My images are used all the time, and unless someone is trying to sell something with the images, I thought this was fine. It turns out it’s not."
"There are law firms that do nothing but scour social media for dummies like myself who have enough followers to pay up." Paulina went on to say that they ended up settling out of court, because even though she didn't have any ill intentions, the photographer was still in the right. "I did use an unauthorized photo- even if it was carrying on the message I thought the photographer was trying to make – that war is evil. And boy, did that turn out to be an expensive mistake!"
"So, if you find my thread unbearable in its vanity and narcissism already, it’s not gonna get better. You may want to unfollow now before I annoy you further," she concluded. "For those of you who don’t mind- thank you for taking this journey called life with me. I’m so very grateful for you! #betweenjloandbettywhite #gettingsuedisexpensive Yes, this is what I look like in the morning. ."
People in the comments chimed in to share their opinions. Many found it outrageous that the photographer would sue in the first place.
"This is simply just lame," one person wrote. "I’m a lawyer, an intellectual property lawyer, and although there is the legal basis for copyright infringement your use was done in support of what the creator intended. You made no money from using their image, and more so, they got a ton of exposure from your platform. We live in such a litigious world now, it’s sad actually. … the good side to this all is we get to see more of your mug."
Other people agreed with the photographer's actions to sue.
"As a photographer we deserve to be paid for our work," one comment read. "It took years to get the photo, equipment planes you name it. All professional photographers deserve to be paid for their work- and as a model- where brands hire photographer- surprised you dont know that to be frank. In fact you do- as you hired a friend of mine a couple of months ago in Malibu/ so why are you complaning. You think some how news documentarian and candid and art photographer arnt of value. actually historically our work is valued f#higher in the lexicon of photography history then fashion and event photograogers. So heres the thing – if you want my art for your walls its around $10k and upwards. If you want to liscence my work for SM or anything fees are on par eith Getty. You know all photographers get paid."
All in all, it seems as though Paulina does not want to make that same mistake again. Since then, she has truly stuck to posting lots of selfie content. When she did post a professional photo of herself, taken for Marianne magazine, she made sure to tag and credit everyone involved.
