Earlier this year, professional photographer
Stephen Mallon posted a gallery on his personal Web site showing the salvage of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 from the icy Hudson River, where it made its miraculous landing.
Tens of thousands of visitors viewed Mallon’s one-of-a-kind gallery, which showed cranes lifting the dripping plane out of the river, a massive truck transporting the jet through suburban New Jersey, and workers preparing the aircraft for storage.
But since posting the images in February, Mallon has hit a series of obstacles. The latest comes from U.S. Airways and insurance giant AIG, who have ordered the images not to be shown. For now, no one can see the pictures.
Mallon, not itching for a fight with the crane company that hired him, decided to comply with the request from the airline and its insurance company. But he’s not pleased.
“The logic doesn’t make any sense because it’s such a heroic story,” Mallon says. “Why would they try to cover up something that was good news?”
This is the second time Mallon has pulled the photo gallery offline. In February, the National Transportation Safety Board expressed concern about specific photographs showing the interior of the plane. Mallon took all the images offline and spoke to the NTSB. After a few days the agency gave him the OK to re-post the gallery without those images, he says, and the gallery (or most of it) reappeared.
More recently, Mallon received an inquiry from
Wired magazine, which wanted to publish the pictures. Mallon contacted Weeks Marine, the company that hired him to do the shoot, to make sure it was OK to distribute the pictures.
The request got passed along through several parties. Weeks had been hired by J. Supor & Son, which was hired by AIG, which was working on behalf of U.S. Airways. After Mallon made his request, an agent for AIG forwarded him a letter from a U.S. Airways attorney dated February 12 – after Mallon shot and posted the project. The letter instructs Mallon not to release any images of the aircraft because they concern an ongoing investigation. Mallon says he didn’t see the letter until the AIG agent forwarded it to him on March 18.
Mallon says he took the photos offline out of concern for his client. “I was hired as a commercial photographer, and this is coming at the request of the clients,” he says. But he also believes he owns the copyright to the images.
“This wasn’t work for hire,” says Mallon, who is president of the New York Chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers. Mallon says he had hoped to distribute the images in the media and to turn the project into an art exhibition. (In February, Mallon gave
PDN permission to publish one image from the series on the
PDN Photo of the Day blog.)
A representative from the law firm that represents AIG and U.S. Airways,
Dombroff Gilmore Jaques & French, said the companies declined to comment for this story.
Mallon hopes he can persuade AIG and U.S. Airways to change their minds. On his
personal blog, Mallon is asking people to write to AIG and U.S. Airways to put pressure on them to release the photos.
