What Happens When Your Photograph Becomes a Viral Meme?

Photo by Iryna Kalamurza

Shooting a viral image is a surefire sign that you’re doing something right, right? Yet most photographers who shoot something trendworthy quickly lose control of their original work.

This was the case with Iryna Kalamurza, who spoke to PetaPixel last week about the stock photos she took of her dog Maya. They wound up becoming an international meme.

When I first spoke to Iryna, she asked me what happens when an ordinary copyrighted photo becomes internet folklore. “When does remix culture become commercial use? And how can photographers establish provenance?” she also asked.

Aside from a few YouTube videos and the Know Your Meme website, nobody knew that Iryna — a working photographer from Ukraine who fled the Russian invasion — had taken the photos that drove the “A A Folou” and the “Wenomechainsama” memes.

Iryna’s stock photos left and right became a viral meme as her dog Maya became associated with the “Wenomechainsama” meme, center, a playful misinterpretation of Calvin Harris’ song “When I met you in the summer.”

I know what it’s like to shoot a photo that gets reshared, published, and used in ways that I never consented to. I’ve shot a bunch of images, mostly news or features, only to discover that they’ve been used all over the world and even closer to home without my permission and certainly without being compensated.

Similar to what Iryna felt, it’s a bittersweet emotion: Is it cool that people in a faraway land like Brazil or Indonesia are looking at your photo? Yes. Is it frustrating that they didn’t reach out to ask permission, let alone offer payment? Also yes.

When this first started happening to me, I used to get mad. I would spend time writing emails, consulting IP lawyers, and spending energy on an issue that I ultimately came to realize I could do very little about.

While it is possible to intercept a copyright infringer who is in the same country as you, or in a similar country that has strong legal institutions, such as Western Europe and North America, it’s also a lot of effort that can be time-consuming and better spent redirected elsewhere.

There are services available that you can hire and agencies you can sign with. I know some photographers who dedicate a lot of time to hunting down infringers — some of them have success, while others have built entire careers around it.

Ultimately, I found it all to be a waste of time. I decided to focus on making fresh photos and building a list of trusted clients.

I essentially just shrugged my shoulders at certain infringers who I began to realize I could do nothing about. That’s not to say I stopped altogether. I would still confront publications that I knew should be paying and were just trying to pull a fast one.

Dealing With Your Photo Becoming a Meme

But as to Iryna’s initial questions about her particular photos entering into internet folklore, memes are the definition of transformative, often spreading cultural ideas or themes in an esoteric way. Sadly, there’s not a great deal Iryna and Maya could do.

However, Iryna’s skillful photos of Maya are central to the “A A Folou” and “Wenomechainsama” meme. The idea that a photographer is paid from a viral meme shouldn’t be outlandish, and yet it most definitely is. Just ask the photographer who took “Distracted Boyfriend.”

The other question that Iryna asked was about provenance. This is different: photographers should and can establish authorship. While most people who see Maya’s meme as they doomscroll through their algorithm will likely never see Iryna’s credit, anyone who cares should be able to easily find out a bit more about the meaning of the meme, where it comes from, and who the original creator is.

Iryna set up social media pages for Maya and received fan mail from besotted fans in Brazil. But there’s even more you can do: a website for your work that contains articles about your viral images will show up on Google. And then leeching AI crawlers hoover up that information to feed it into LLM chatbots.

Better yet, get your story on a more established website like PetaPixel.com, where the information is put out to a bigger audience. Basically, the more you can publish about your work, who you are, and the effect you’ve had, the more likely you are to be credited for your work, and the more likely people can find you.

And who knows, there might be someone out there looking to license your images for something cool. This actually happened to me recently. You can read about that here.