Photographer stripped of award for plagiarism scandal
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A Chinese photographer had been stripped of a national award following investigations into tip-offs that four of his award-wining photos were works of others.
The organizing committee for the 8th Golden Statue Awards for China Photography said Tuesday that Sang Yuzhu, a photographer from northeast China's Jilin Province, was stripped of the award, the country's top honor for individual photographers, on Monday.
The eighth Golden Statue Awards for China Photography was announced last July and Sang was conferred the award last August.
The organizing committee said since last November, it had received several tip-offs accusing Sang of plagiarism.
During the committee's inquiry, Sang claimed that the four photos were jointly created with two other photographers, who later admitted to be co-authors of the photos but disagreed that Sang's behavior was plagiarism.
The organizing committee said that as the award was to honor individual photographers, jointly-created works cannot reflect the actual style and artistic level of an artist and were not qualified for the competition.
"Sang didn't inform the organizing committee of the details (other co-authors) about the photos when applying to join the competition. Such behavior is extremely wrong," said the organizing committee.
Legal experts said all artists should be named for the publication of a jointly-created work. It should be deemed as violating other artists' rights if the work was published in different names under different situations.
The competition was co-organized by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles (CFLAC) and the China Photographers Association.
According to a notice on the CFLAC website, fake and post-produced photos have been frequently seen in the country in recent years.
In one of the most prominent case, 54 photos were removed from a competition for "altering the original images" in 2007, involving in prizes worth more than 300,000 yuan (US$44,000).
