If you’ve been following the news recently you may have heard of the situation between concert photographer J Salmeron and Arch Enemy. Salmeron found himself blacklisted by the band after requesting a fee to license a photo he took of frontwoman Alissa White-Gluz during a set at the ‘FortaRock Festival‘ this past summer. At the heart of the matter of the dispute was the reposting of the photo by Thunderball Clothing, whom had created the custom outfit Alissa was wearing in the photo.
Essentially Salmeron felt his photo was being used for commercial purposes when it was reposted on the Thunderball Clothing account and requested a fee. The band themselves disagreed.
You can read about that in his own words with a follow-up statement from Alissa herself here. Meanwhile, Thunderball Clothing founder Marta Gabriel has since issued the below statement/apology on the matter:
“THUNDERBALL CLOTHING – STATEMENT / APOLOGY
I would like to publicly apologise Mr J. Salmeron for reposting one of the photos he took, on my Instagram page, without having his permission. When few months ago I was reposting his photo from the Instagram page of the Arch Enemy singer Alissa White-Gluz, I was simply proud that such a great artist is wearing a clothing piece that I made, and wanted to share these news with my followers.
As I did the repost with an app that included all original credits and watermarks, I thought that it’s OK. I meant no harm, and it wasn’t my intention to promote any product, however, I do agree that it might looked like that, and I understand that the author of the photography could feel upset about it. And I am sorry about it.
After I received an email message from J. Salmeron, who introduced himself as a lawyer and author of the photography, I interpreted it as another spam or scam (well, all of us receive this kind of emails all the time). I saw the amount of 500 Euro and the name of Alissa White-Gluz, from whom I reposted mentioned photo, so without going deeper into that message, I did what I thought was most logic – I contacted her, forwarded the original message that I got, and asked her what to do.
I was instructed to take down the photo (what I immediatelly did), and was informed that someone else will take care of it. That again seemed logic, as I was aware that I’m not at the position of taking any actions on behalf of Arch Enemy, nor their members. I had no other contact with J. Salmeron, I haven’t heard from him since then, and to be honest, for the last 6 months I had no idea that something is wrong, especially as the photo was taken down.
That being said, I would like to apologise J. Salmeron once again. Not only I’m willing to discuss with him how to compenaste him and fix the situation, but also how to make sure similar situation won’t happen ever again. After all, we’re all playing in the same team, and we all have one thing in common. We love music.
Marta Gabriel, Thunderball Clothing“
