Photographer Finds Paintings That are Near-Exact Replicas of his Photographs

A photographer from Virginia was in for quite a surprise when he attended the Scope Art Fair during Miami Beach's famous Art Basel Festival. Jason Levesque takes highly stylized photographs of his subjects, and as he browsed artwork at the fair, he stopped in his tracks when he saw a series of paintings by Josafat Miranda. The paintings very closely resembled some of Levesque's photos. And as if that weren't bad enough, Levesque noticed that he was not credited in any of the paintings. And they weren't cheap: Miranda's paintings were priced at around $4,000 each. Levesque wanted to call out Miranda for his copycat artwork, so he took to Facebook, where he posted his photographs alongside Miranda's paintings. Levesque posted the following message with the photographs: "What Josafat Miranda has done here reveals a total disrespect for photography as an art form." The comparison photos then made their way over to Reddit, where people joined in on Levesque's outrage. The owner of the art gallery has now removed Miranda's paintings. And although Miranda called his paintings a "tribute" to Levesque's work, he has agreed to destroy them.

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