Section: Local News
The image on the new commemorative nickel unveiled by the U.S. Mint
seemed familiar to LaRee Johnson.
The rugged coastal vista was strikingly similar to a view that her
partner, photographer Andy Cier, had captured in one of his photos.
The nickel, the last in a series of four commemorating America's
westward expansion, was officially released by the U.S. Mint at a
ceremony Aug. 5 at Cape Disappointment, Wash.
The coin features a previously unreleased image of Thomas Jefferson on
the front, and on the "tails" side it shows a view of the coast with a
William Clark's famous journal entry "Ocean in View! O! The Joy!"
Johnson, who is active in the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial, attended
the nickel ceremony last month, which drew almost 1,000 coin
collectors as well as the coin's designer, Joe Fitzgerald.
"When I got it in my hand, I thought, 'This looks incredibly
familiar,'" she said.
She showed the nickel to Cier, who enlarged the coin design and
superimposed it over his photo. They found that the main features -
the headlands, trees and horizon - all lined up exactly.
The discovery came as a shock, because Cier had never been contacted
by anyone - not the Mint, not Fitzgerald - for permission to use his
photo.
Cier and Johnson contacted the Mint, and after reviewing the material
they submitted, the agency agreed to officially credit Astorian Cier
for the nickel's design.
"It's a huge deal when an image is on a U.S. coin. When no one gets
permission to use it, that's also huge," Johnson said. "Had this
person come to Andy before he submitted it, Andy would have given him
the copyright (to the photo). He would have been honored to be on a
coin."
Cier has sold copies of the photo, taken on a rocky headland near
Cannon Beach in the late 1980s, as prints, notecards, bookmarks and
other products. It has also been featured in publications like last
year's Bicentennial guide.
After contacting the Mint, Cier and Johnson learned that the only two
options were to stop the nickel's release - something the couple
didn't want - or to work out some arrangement over the copyright that
would allow the Mint to continue issuing the coin.
To do so, Cier had to give up his copyright to the photo. He can,
however, continue to sell prints and other products containing the
image under a special licensing agreement with the agency.
"We want to definitely credit Mr. Cier," said U.S. Mint spokeswoman
Joyce Harris. "We require that our artists' work be original, or that
he or she obtain the rights to any source material. In this case, the
rights were not obtained."
Cier's photograph contains two mostly bare trees that appear full and
healthy on the nickel, and the dramatic clouds that fill the sky in
the picture are missing from the coin. But otherwise, the two images
are almost identical.
Fitzgerald said he is happy Cier is receiving credit for the design.
The painter and retired graphic artist, who lives in Silver Spring,
Md., acknowledged he based his design on Cier's photograph, which he
found while searching the Internet on the Google search engine for a
suitable image for the coin. He printed out a copy of the photo, but
when he went back online to try to get more information about it, he
was unable to find it again, he said.
Fitzgerald said he used the basic outline of the coastal headlands and
ocean in the photo, but changed the trees and some other features.
"I was absolutely certain there couldn't be any copyright infringement
problems, because I only used a portion of it," he said. "My thinking
was that the important things in the photo were the clouds and the
naked trees, and I didn't use those."
Fitzgerald also submitted the winning design for the new Thomas
Jefferson image on the front of the coin. A former graphic designer
for the National Library of Medicine who now paints landscapes, he had
never undertaken anything like designing a coin when he decided to put
in an entry in the Mint's call for submissions for the new nickels, he
said. He received a total of $2,000 for winning the competition.
"I think (Cier) should have credit for it," he said of the nickel. "If
I had been able to find him, I would have given him credit. He's a
brilliant photographer."
(Courtesy of The Daily Astorian archives)