Copyright for vintage Kodachrome slide images?

Factual Questions
1

I inherited a large trunkful of (mostly) vintage 1940s thru 1970s Kodachrome slide images from my Auntie. A couple things I’d like to do, with an eye towards conveniently viewing them, is purchase a “slide 'n scan” device to transfer them to digital .JPEG. What is the most convenient way to do this? There are probably a couple thousand to go through.

I understand this is not the place for legal advice.

I’ve noticed that certain slide images have a certain collectable value. Sometimes a little, sometimes moreso. I’m not under any illusions that these images are worth a great sum of money - but then, I’m not entirely sure either. I could easily sell the entire lot as a pig in a poke for maybe a couple hundred dollars. Better than a kick in the pants, I guess.

But in the slides I’ve gone through, I can’t help but think that maybe I might have something here. Or at least, I should investigate a bit further. The reason I say this, is she was an inveterate world traveler. An English professor, she enjoyed classical history and literature, as one might imagine. Never married, she had the income to enjoy cruise’s on the Queen Mary, and lots of extensive air travel to Europe, the Middle East, Soviet Union, and other then-exotic locales on sabbatical.

She also importantly seemed to really know her stuff when it came to photography. These most definitely are not typical birthday photos of overexposed, out of focus guests with their heads cutoff and other amateur errors. Virtually every pic looks very well composed and framed, properly exposed, good focus and the rest of it. They look like vintage magazine cover shots. And the colors are rich and vibrant, and then the subject matter - many touristy famous places - Greece, rural English countryside, Spain, France, Mexico, etc, famous cathedrals.

Even toyed with the idea of maybe submitting them to Shutterstock or similar, maybe there is some value to them that way? The worst they can say is “No, we’re not interested”, right? But I’m a little unclear on the concept of copyright with these. She is long dead, and I “own” the slides, the physical objects. Is this something to be concerned about in this type of arrangement where images are licensed through third parties?

Yeah, I get it - the likelihood of valuable slides is remote, but I have seen certain vintage slides realize several hundred dollars a piece at auction.

2

I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.

However, as I understand it, the copyright for an unpublished photograph belongs to the photographer for their lifespan + 70 years. Unless otherwise specified in a will or some other document, the copyright for an unpublished work goes to the creator’s heirs… Even if the creator gives you the physical photographs and negatives themselves, that does not necessarily mean that they transferred copyright to you.

So it would seem to depend on whether or not you are an heir of your aunt. Does she have any living descendants? Did she mention you in her will or did you otherwise inherit anything from her?

3

Copyright law changed in 1978, throwing everything from the 1940s to the 1970s into uncertainty.

You can try looking at Copyrights and Other Rights in Photographic Images. Unpublished images are controlled by the copyright law in effect at the time they were taken, which would be the 1909 law that didn’t take slides into account.

Talk to a lawyer. You probably have to show that you are the legal owner of the slides and rights through inheritance.

4

I worked for Getty Images for several years (albeit a while ago now) and have managed teams more recently doing stock photo acquisition and license management. I have a few thoughts that I’ve been able to excavate from deeper areas of my brain.

First, I’ll take as given that these photos are as excellent and interesting as you say. With that, both Getty and Corbis had teams that acquired older collections of vintage or historical material. I don’t know if that’s still the case, but I might call Getty and see if you can find a still-existing acquisitions team to talk to them. Shutterstock might have a similar point of contact.

As an aside, I once spent a magical afternoon in Getty’s Hulton Archive warehouse poking through imagery just like yours. Someone handed me a giant box of unpublished photos of the Beatles, as an example. You could just get lost digging through the piles.

From a standard commercial stock perspective, you’re going to have lots of trouble with photos with identifiable people in them. Any of the stock houses will require model releases to go with each such photo. They will still be OK for editorial use, but that significantly limits the scope in which they can be sold.

From an archivists perspective, there are places that want collections like this, but I’m not familiar with the space and can’t speak to directly about it. I would expect that we’re talking about donation and preservation here and not actual cash payouts.

Last, but maybe from my perspective most important, don’t lay out money for a scanner until you’ve identified what your final intent is. Those desktop slide scanners are not particularly pro-quality, and the work needed to color correct and dust thousands of images is monumental. To get reference-quality scans of these for archival purposes takes a different level of equipment. There are quality, size and format constraints that any commercial user of these would require, and an archival house would strongly prefer. Don’t do the work until you know the expected standard.

5

Thanks for the advice! Yeah, I’m the sole heir, she left her estate to her nephews in 1980.

I bought a scanner, just so I would have something to view them with, and at least save them to a hard drive. A Kodak Scanza. What is unclear to me, it says I need an SD card, or it won’t work. I thought my computer hard-drive would be suitable for storing the images.

But it sounds like an SD card is not included, which makes no sense to me. So I need to purchase a $10 SD card, which I won’t use, because I’m storing the images on my computer hard-drive, but, the device itself won’t work without one Do I have that right?

My initial eye in purchasing a scanner is simply the ability to post examples of the images online for potential sale of (some) of the slides themselves. Or maybe go through them (a lot of them!) and then select and submit some of the best slides physically to one of the agencies. Alternatively there are scanning services that will do a high resolution, professional job of digitization for not too much money, maybe $2-$4 a slide.

It’s actually a bit spooky to see such vibrant, rich colors in these vintage slides. I’m more used to seeing washed out, blurry and faded “pink” photographs.

6

I just quickly googled the scanner and it says you can save to a card OR your computer. It looks like it comes with a usb cable and that should do it. Good luck with your project!

7

I saw that too, but the multi-lingual 144 page .PDF also seems to indicate it will not work without an SD card. I talked the seller into including one, so should be good to go regardless.

8

I don’t want to come across as overly negative here, but at those rates, those aren’t pro-quality repro-ready or fine art scans. I’d be expecting $20 to $30 a pop from a service bureau with a drum scanner.

9

It has a 14Mp scan resolution, but the manual does ot really specify dpi. I think that works out to about 3200dpi resolution for a 35mm slide. (the 22Mp mode is software interpolated from 14Mp) That’s pretty good. Even if you sell the collection, it’s nice to have a personal copy (I guess the question is what are your rights if you sign over the ollection?)

The key is the throughput time. I digitized my dad’s hundreds of slides and negatives from the 1940’s onward. (None really of commercial value). I used a Canoscan 8800 and it was a painful process working occasionally over weeks - load a strip of 6 negatives or 4 slides, start scan, wait 10 minute or more… Worse yet, I had no idea who half the people in the photos were, although over time assorted family have identified some.

The other trick is to decide how to calalog the pictures. I hope they are still arranged by chronolgy or destination.

10

Most of them, thankfully. The majority I think are in aluminum box magazines. I can certainly see how this is kind of a monumental task.

11

I converted some old home movies from 8mm film and my reaction was like yours. I couldn’t believe how good the images were after 40 years. Looked practically as good as they day they were developed.

I would tend to think that the touristy places would typically already have lots of photos from over the years, and your photos of those locations would not necessarily be all that desired. Unless there’s something really special about your photos (like someone famous in them), I would think they’re going to be pretty similar to the thousands of other photos taken of those places. Even if they have great composition, I would guess there are lots of other photos of those sites with great composition as well.

I might think that photos of day-to-day life might be more in demand. That type of subject would have been less common and might be more interesting to a modern viewer. Especially if they are good quality. For example, I’m more interested in seeing the normal street life like in Colorized film of 1911 NYC than seeing a perfect picture of the Statue of Liberty in 1911.

In today’s online world, I might think you could have a successful blog with these photos. Like, create an “My Aunt’s Travels” Instagram page and post the photos there. If you get lots of followers, you can get some revenue from that. And the more followers you have, the better chance that someone who is financially interested in your photos will contact you.

12

For this type of sharing, Shorpy.com might be a good place to upload a selection of scans. I’ve posted a few there myself.

13

Yep, I have thought of that. But there is always at least some demand for more of the same. How many more pictures of the Beatles are really necessary?

My auntie did get off the beaten path too, she was quite the adventurist. One magazine I went through, was some sort of rural Mexico tourist area, with some little kid sitting in a doorway. Neat lighting, neat color. She should have been a stringer for Natty Geo. But is the little kid “identifiable”? Famous? Well not really. I’m a little unclear how that would work from a copyright angle, even if the slide is only worth five bucks. Can’t publish photos of little kids from 70 years ago? 60? 50?

What surprised me though for example, in trying to gauge online what is and isn’t marketable, the demand for basically ordinary street scenes of downtown Seoul, South Korea. Sometimes a couple hundred dollars for a single slide. Obviously Seoul has changed dramatically since the 1950s. I think a lot of people are the same way around the world, they enjoy seeing period clothes, cars, shops, restaurants, advertising, and the hairstyles and just ordinary things more than the Louvre or Coliseum itself. There is a certain sterility to things now.

14

This is something to consider, as well. Thanks

15

As noted, US copyright has changed over the years. In particular many times since 1976. That was the law alluded to above that really mixed things up.

If the images were never copyrighted originally, then they are in the public domain. If they were copyrighted and the copyright renewed up to the 1992 change in the law plus other copyright extensions, then the life+70 years thing might be in effect. If the creator made these in the 1940s then this might be true. Note that for the creator to have filed for copyright protection under the then existing laws some fees had to be paid. Not a lot of people did that for their personal photos.

If you knew the name of the creator or whoever paid the creator, etc. you could look it up online to see if a copyright was filed, renewed. etc. But that’s practically a moon shot.

The good news if the pics are in the public domain is you can do what you like. The bad news is that you don’t have any rights if your scans are mere mechanical duplication. People can use those scans however they want. If you put significant effort into the scans, hours of PSing them, etc., then those new versions might qualify for copyright. But again, for real copyright protection you have to officially file and pay some $.

16

You might want to check out the saga of Vivian Maier, who was a Chicago nanny who took over 150,000 photographs, which were discovered by some collectors after her death in 2007, subsequently publicly shown (including a 2013 Oscar nominated documentary, Finding Vivian Maier), then became subject of an international copyright dispute, settled in 2019.

Website on her photographs:

An article about the settlement of copyright:

One of her street photographs (I think I can say with some confidence that she did not obtain any releases from her subjects).

17

You don’t need a release for fine art or editorial uses. But you do for commercial use.

18

Isn’t that amazing?

19

It wasn’t commercial then. But it is now. (sorta?) See where I’m goin’ with that? In this instance, Vivian died intestate. That complicates things.

Presuming the young lady in the photograph is still alive, though, for the sake of argument there is some sort of release required?

20

For editorial and fine art use, no. For commercial use, yes.