On Sunday, April 6, 2014, Raffy Parcon posted on Facebook photos of the said Bench shirt along with the photo of the original artwork.
It was captioned with:
So it appears that Bench/ lifestyle + clothing is using our artwork and making money out of it without our permission.
Here are pictures of the t-shirt in question (available now in Bench stores) along with the original image that we created for a personal photography project, which was inspired by Ben Heine's work.
As proof that we are the originators of the image, you can see the rest of the project here: https://www.facebook.com/raffy.parcon/media_set?set=a.2156133312039.2131896.1507664274&type=3
and here: http://motsmots.blogspot.com/2011/07/raffy-is-man.html
and here: http://patxi.tumblr.com/post/7521757865/project-manila-paper-nila-sol-palakol-lala-torres
There were four of us involved in this photography project. None of us heard from Bench to ask permission to use the artwork. I hope that posting this would prompt Bench to provide a proper explanation.A day after, Bench posted a comment on Parcon's photo saying they were surprised at the incident and that the shirts in question have been pulled out from their stores.
Dear Mr. Parcon,
We are equally surprised at this incident. BENCH/ does not tolerate these type of actions. Rest assured that we are on top of this matter and as of this morning, stocks of the shirts have been pulled-out from the selling area.
We will get in touch with you shortly to settle this issue. Our apologies.
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photo: fb.com/raffy.parcon
