Stolen Puppy Photography

Photo courtesy of Mary Lundberg

Puppies are man’s cutest and bestest friends, and people who mistreat them are coldhearted monsters who probably have a baby-dick complex. Unfortunately, monsters do exist, and puppies are often abused, abandoned, trained by brutal methods to attack other dogs or people, or dropped off at pounds where they’re executed instead of sold.

A few years ago, Florida-based photographer Mary Lundberg decided to spread some awareness about abused canines by crafting portraits of the adorable animals she met while working at a shelter, but her good deed turned sour when adoption centers she wasn’t familiar with began using her images without her permission. Mary’s concerned because she has no way to check whether the places using her photos and drawings are really treating their charges humanely or if they’re using them to trick good-hearted animal lovers. I reached out to her to ask how it felt to have her work ripped off. VICE: How did your art project start?
Mary Lundberg: I began at a shelter in Newport, Tennessee. At the time, they had very bad numbers regarding euthanasia. Many people dumped animals there and few adopted. I thought I should use my art to speak about these issues. When I moved to Florida, I continued the project. How did the project lead to people scamming you?
What happened is that when I began to go to Miami, I also discovered Facebook and the fact that people use it to adopt dogs and cats. I began to post images that I had taken for my work to help the dogs—it seemed more important at the time to help save a life rather than keep them for a gallery. Then I started seeing these pictures popping up in what were called “chipins.” Chipin.com was a site that anyone could go on and create a page to ask for donations. I started to see people using my images—no permission asked—on Chipin. After someone used an image I made for ads about a dog, the dog ended up getting pulled and bounced from place to place.

That image was also ripped off and used as a logo for a rescue called Helping Paws22. I never gave permission for that—it really has put me in a bad spot. I need to make sure there are not bad things or people or situations associated with my images, yet if I speak out I become the bad guy in the eyes of the rescue community. Did you stop them from using your images?
I sent the chick who altered it a cease-and-desist letter. She removed it from her page, but the image was already all over. Did you feel like you’d been scammed?
Animal rescue is emotional. For anyone wanting to scam and manipulate people, animal rescue is a great thing to get into.