Image: John Ashbery (1975)

Description: Photo portrait of the American poet John Ashbery.
Title: John Ashbery (1975)
Credit: Back cover of the dust jacket of the first edition of Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Image cropped from a high-resolution scan of the dust jacket. As originally printed on the dust jacket, the portrait is tinted blue; this image has been rendered in black and white. Some other edits were made to remove minor flaws (such as minor specks on the scanned cover) and to reduce noise from compression in the original scan. The modifications are de minimis and do not require attribution.
Author: The photo portrait is credited to Michael Teague. (For jurisdictions that define copyright term on the date of the author's death: according to this obituary in The New York Times, Teague died in 1999.) Dust jacket published by Viking Press.
Permission: No permission is required for the following reasons: The image file is a mechanical scan/photocopy of the original cover and does not qualify for independent copyright protection. The photo and the rest of the book's dust jacket were published without a copyright notice and, therefore, are ineligible for copyright protection. The collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror was published in 1975; the book itself carried a copyright notice (seen here in a scan of the book at archive.org) and its contents remain copyrighted. However, the first-edition dust jacket did not carry a separate copyright notice. According to The Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices: Chapter 2200, § 2207.1(C) at p. 15: "A notice of copyright on the dust jacket of a book is not an acceptable notice for the book, because the dust jacket is not permanently attached to the book. Likewise, a notice appearing in a book is not an acceptable notice for the dust jacket or any material appearing on that dust jacket, even if the book refers to the jacket or material appearing on the jacket." To verify the lack of a copyright notice, high-resolution photos of other parts of the same edition's dust jacket can be seen via WorthPoint, Freeman's Auctioneers & Appraisers, and Biblio: Back cover; spine (and front cover again); left flap (alternate view); and right flap. Keep in mind that the pre-1989 requirements for copyright notice were highly formalistic and, other than a few enumerated exceptions, required these three elements: "The symbol © or the word 'Copyright' or the abbreviation 'Copr.' or an acceptable variant such as "(c)" "The year of first publication for the work"; and "The name of the copyright owner, or an abbreviation by which the name can be recognized, or a generally known alternative designation of the owner." If just one of these elements is omitted, the work is deemed to be published without notice and is not eligible for copyright protection. None of the following meets the required elements: the identification of the publisher on the right flap and back cover, the credit "Jacket design by Jacqueline Schuman" on the right flap, and the credit "Michael Teague" next to the photo portrait on the back cover. The year of publication, "1975", is not found anywhere on the dust jacket.
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No