Welsh music photographer Justin Thomas is accusing painter Elizabeth Peyton, David Zwirner Gallery, and Sotheby’s of copyright infringement involving his 1995 photograph of British pop star brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher of the British rock band Oasis.
In an August 20 lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York, Thomas’s attorney, Terry Parker, describes Peyton’s painting, “Earl’s Court (Liam + Noel)” (1996), as a “slavish copy” of the 1995 photograph, according to court documents first reported by the legal blog Copyright Lately and reviewed by Hyperallergic.
Peyton’s painting closely resembles a zoomed-in section of Thomas’s image, which shows the famously feuding siblings and Oasis musicians in a rare embrace. The black-and-white photograph became widely recognized during the British pop music wave across the United Kingdom, and a print of it appears on the cover of Thomas’s 2024 photography book, How Does It Feel? – Oasis 1995/2002.
Under copyright law, an accused infringer must have altered the appearance of the original work in a sufficiently “transformative” way. The complaint argues that the similarities are extensive, stating, “The only transformation is the medium itself, and Peyton’s slight cropping of the Copyrighted Work and adding different coloring and brush work.” In Peyton’s painting, she adds details including a blue flower-patterned sleeve.
