Image-Based Research
BEATRICE JOYEUX-PRUNEL: The Legal Labyrinth of Image-Based Research: Insights from the Visual Contagions Project
Chair: Gábor Dobó
Copyright law remains one of the most frustrating obstacles for art historians—especially for those working with illustrations from periodicals, and even more so when dealing with large-scale digitized corpora. At the heart of the issue lies a challenge: identifying, dating, and locating the publication of images. Drawing on the Visual Contagions project—a research initiative on globalization through images in the 19th and 20th centuries—this presentation will highlight key moments where legal considerations around copyright (including reproduction, dissemination, and data mining) must be taken into account. It will also outline some of the strategies developed to navigate these constraints.
Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel
Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel is a full professor at the University of Geneva, Chair of Digital Humanities. She leads the Visual Contagions project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, which focuses on the global circulation of images in the 20th century. A specialist in artistic and cultural globalization, she is widely recognized for her trilogy on the global and social history of avant-gardes, published by Gallimard (paperback: volumes 1 and 2) and CNRS Editions (volume 3) (English translation in progress for Brill publishings). Last publication: L'Art contemporain. Une infographie, with Guillemette Crozet (Paris:CNRS Editions, 2024).