Dedicated and detail-oriented readers may recall a post from way back in 2011 about an advertisement that appeared in Time and Newsweek in 1961. The ad featured my father portraying a medical student (which he was not).
For those of you too lazy to click, here’s the ad.
In that 2011 post, I explained:
The advertisements, smartly entitled “Doctor of Tomorrow,” promoted the A. H. Robins pharmaceutical company based in Richmond, Virginia. The premise of the copy was that my father and the other man pictured in the ad were medical students practicing the art of drawing blood samples. The ad makes the point that it takes many years for a medical student to become a quality doctor, then segues into a comparison about how the pharmaceutical industry takes years of research to develop quality medication.
Neither of the people pictured in this advertisement were doctors or even medical students in real life. Apparently (according to my mom), it was illegal at the time for actual medical professionals to appear in advertising of any kind.
Thirteen years later, and I was doing an image search to see if there was a HQ version of that ad. And I found one–sort of!
What I actually discovered was that a pseudonymous artist named “Joan Seed” had repurposed this ad for a piece of pop art that looks like this:
Well, then!
Have a very gay Father’s Day, everyone! And don’t forget to buy the t-shirt!
The Axis of Ego 
I wonder if there’s any legal recourse to stop this person from commercializing this? Happy Gay Father’s Day!
If there is, it wouldn’t be by me. The rights (if they still exist) would be that of the original photographer’s, or, more likely, the successor-in-interest of the company that hired or employed the photographer. In other words, I don’t think I would have any standing to sue simply based on the fact that this happens to be my father.