“I am a street photographer in New York City. Several months ago, I was approached by a representative of DKNY who asked to purchase 300 of my photos to hang in their store windows “around the world.” They offered me $15,000. A friend in the industry told me that $50 per photo was not nearly enough to receive from a company with hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. So I asked for more money. They said “no.”

Today, a fan sent me a photo from a DKNY store in Bangkok. The window is full of my photos. These photos were used without my knowledge, and without compensation.

I don’t want any money. But please REBLOG this post if you think that DKNY should donate $100,000 on my behalf to the YMCA in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. That donation would sure help a lot of deserving kids go to summer camp. I’ll let you guys know if it happens.”

As I may love Donna’s easy-breezy jersey dresses and metro style as much as the next girl, art theft is unnaceptable, especially when you’re a multimillion dollar company. Fifteen thousand wouldn’t probably be acceptable pay for more than ten store windows in New York City alone, nevermind worldwide! In this case, even the photographer himself is taking the higher ground and requesting the money be donated to a charity instead of going to him.

Now, I have no way of confirming if the story is true, and if it’s not, apologies to DKNY – I still don’t like your bags, but you’re hanging in there. If it is true, however, it’s completely ridiculous and something should be done. As much as people will tell me ‘this sort of stuff happens all the time’ – it shouldn’t. It really shouldn’t. Because whereas fiften thousand dollars are pennies for such a big global company, even fifty dollars mean a lot to many of us.

If you have any information or are on Tumblr, please reblog the original post or at least try to help us find out if this is true.