Purgatoire Canyon on the JE Canyon Ranch, a former working cattle ranch turned 50,000-acre conservation laboratory for the Nature Conservancy, which bought the little-known but scenery-and-biodiversity-rich site in 2015
Summary
Title, date and keywords based on information provided by the photographer.
Especially unknown to the outside world, including even most Coloradans, is the ranch's steep, stunning Purgatoire (sometimes called Picketwire) Canyon on the banks of the Purgatoire River that seems to drop precipitously from the otherwise flat prairie of southeastern Colorado's Las Animas County. The Nature Conservancy's goals in obtaining the obscure wonder included protection against development through a conservation easement, restoration of the threatened shortgrass prairie and pinon-juniper forest, and utilizing the vast property for botanical and other research. French trappers named the river to commemorate Spanish explorers killed in an Indian attack.
Credit line: Gates Frontiers Fund Colorado Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Gift; Gates Frontiers Fund; 2015; (DLC/PP-2015:068).
Forms part of: Gates Frontiers Fund Colorado Collection within 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/)