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Inside one of the unusual structures at Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village in Simi Valley, California
Inside one of the unusual structures at Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village in Simi Valley, California
Inside one of the unusual structures at Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village in Simi Valley, California
Inside one of the unusual structures at Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village in Simi Valley, California
Inside one of the unusual structures at Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village in Simi Valley, California
A remnant of one the unusual structures at Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village in Simi Valley, California
One of the unusual structures at Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village in Simi Valley, California
One of the unusual structures at Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village in Simi Valley, California
One of the unusual structures at Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village in Simi Valley, California
Inside one of the unusual structures at Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village in Simi Valley, California
Summary
Title, date, and keywords provided by the photographer.
At age 60, Tressa "Grandma" Prisbrey, began carting bottles home from the town dump to use as inexpensive building material, initially for a wall between her and a neighboring turkey farm. Over time she transformed her one-third acre rural lot into Bottle Village, a folk-art fantasyland of shrines, wishing wells, mosaic walkways, fountains, follies, and 15 structures all made from found objects.
Credit line: The Jon B. Lovelace Collection of California Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith's America Project, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Gift; The Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation in memory of Jon B. Lovelace; 2012; (DLC/PP-2012:063).
Forms part of: Jon B. Lovelace Collection of California Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith's America Project in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive.
In 2015, documentary photographer Carol Highsmith received a letter from Getty Images accusing her of copyright infringement for featuring one of her own photographs on her own website. It demanded payment of $120. This was how Highsmith came to learn that stock photo agencies Getty and Alamy had been sending similar threat letters and charging fees to users of her images, which she had donated to the Library of Congress for use by the general public at no charge. In 2016, Highsmith has filed a $1 billion copyright infringement suit against both Alamy and Getty stating “gross misuse” of 18,755 of her photographs. “The defendants [Getty Images] have apparently misappropriated Ms. Highsmith’s generous gift to the American people,” the complaint reads. “[They] are not only unlawfully charging licensing fees … but are falsely and fraudulently holding themselves out as the exclusive copyright owner.” According to the lawsuit, Getty and Alamy, on their websites, have been selling licenses for thousands of Highsmith’s photographs, many without her name attached to them and stamped with “false watermarks.” (more: http://hyperallergic.com/314079/photographer-files-1-billion-suit-against-getty-for-licensing-her-public-domain-images/)