Attribution/Non-Commercial Pls. ...

Google Image Search, eh?

There you are looking for something completely different and stumble across one of your images on another blog.

Brilliant. Or not.

I am not quite sure how I feel about it. I should be happy that somebody seems to share my delight in these images, no? But the author of said blog - yes, SpiralUpward, it’s you I’m talking to - has neither linked to my Flickr set nor this blog. And, because one needs to log in to comment, I cannot even leave a reply on the blog to link to the set or add context to the images he/she republished. So, I am having rather mixed feelings about this.

This is somewhat hypocritical of me, you say?

Fair enough. I am reposting articles and images a lot of times. My Flickr sets include images taken from articles. And, let’s face it, even ‘my own’ images represent the work of others, i.e. the Nigerian artists who produced those posters, stickers, and lorry paintings. But, in my defence, my writings acknowledge my Nigerian sources and I do make an effort to include links and attribute the work of others to their authors (yes, do let me know if you notice that I have missed one).[1] So, I do think it is only fair to expect others to do the same.

So, for the record:

By all means, do make use of any information on this blog you find useful. If my passion for the stuff I study is contagious, brilliant. If you spread the news further, even better. But do identify me and my blog as your source (you and I know that northern Nigerian arts and this blog could do with the publicity ;) ). Include the blog in your bibliography, link to me, etc. And, pls. extend this favour to my sources – links to articles and image sources are included in my posts. In other words, stick by the rules that apply to anything published under Creative Commons Attribution/Non-Commercial License.

Now, let me go back to this original Google Image Search and double check whether I correctly remember in which German collection I had seen this beautiful al-Buraq chromolithograph …


[1] I know, I know, they do not come out in the design of the blog at the moment. Frankly, I don’t understand why. I’ve tried several times to change the template so they appear in a different colour and it doesn’t allow me to have them automatically underlined as MS Word does, weirdly enough. I’ll work it out one day, insha’allah. Meanwhile, they are there. Usually I insert the link into the headline of the article I repost or, where biographical info is concerned, the author’s/artist’s/etc. name. And, if it says that you can find more information ‘here,’ in most cases ‘here’ will take you to the website in question.

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