Rights and Permissions: Use of the Work of Peter Terezakis

Version v5 — 28 September 2026. This text supersedes the policy first published in 1998.

Overview

All works by Peter Terezakis — sculpture, installations, light and kinetic works, photographs, video, film, sound, texts, and the documentation of those works — are protected under United States copyright law (Title 17 of the United States Code), including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 and the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, and under the Berne Convention in the more than 180 countries that are party to it. Copyright subsists automatically from the moment a work is fixed in a tangible medium; neither a notice nor a registration is required for protection.

Nothing in this policy restricts uses that the law already permits, including fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107. Where the use you have in mind is not clearly addressed below, or you are uncertain whether it qualifies, please write before you proceed. A short description of the intended use, medium, audience, and duration is usually sufficient for a prompt reply. Use the contact form for inquiries.

This document is revised without notice. The version code above identifies the text in force.

Ed Dupree and Peter Terezakis, Cozumel, 1979

Ed Dupree and Peter Terezakis, Hotel Villa Blanca, Cozumel, 1979

1. Teaching, Lectures, and Scholarly Presentations — Permitted without Fee

You may show images, video excerpts, and documentation of the work in classroom teaching, conference presentations, lectures, and workshops, whether in person, streamed, or recorded for a course site, under the following conditions:

Credit — the artist's name, the title of the work, the year, and terezakis.com — appears on screen while the work is shown.
Images may be taken from terezakis.com at the resolution displayed there; no separate request is needed. Higher-resolution files for scholarly presentation may be requested by email.
Recordings of a lecture that include the works may remain on a password-protected learning management system for the duration of the course. Public posting of such a recording requires the credit above and a link to terezakis.com.
A thumbnail with full credit on a class handout is acceptable. Standalone prints, posters, or reproductions distributed outside the class are not.

2. Scholarship, Journalism, Criticism, and Publishing

When the work itself is the subject of an article, review, chapter, catalogue essay, thesis, or interview, reproduction is free, and print-quality files will be supplied on request. Please write with the name of the publication, the works you wish to reproduce, and the expected print run or platform. A courtesy copy or link upon publication is appreciated.

Using the work merely to illustrate some other subject — as stock imagery, decoration, or a generic image of "art," "science," or "climate" — is not permitted without a written license.

Captions should follow this form: Peter Terezakis, Title, year. Medium. Photograph: [photographer]. © Peter Terezakis. Courtesy of the artist.

3. Personal Websites, Blogs, and Social Media

Sharing, reposting, embedding, or linking to material published on the artist's own accounts or on terezakis.com through a platform's native share or embed function is welcome and requires no permission.
Downloading and re-uploading: you may post up to three images on a personal, non-commercial website or account, each with visible credit and a working link to terezakis.com, at no more than 1,200 pixels on the longest side. Do not repost original-resolution files.
Do not crop, filter, recolor, animate, overlay text upon, or otherwise alter an image, and do not use one as a background, header, banner, or wallpaper. Use as an avatar or profile picture requires prior written permission.
Images may not appear on sites or accounts that promote hatred, harassment, or disinformation, or on any site the artist deems inappropriate.
Do not remove or obscure watermarks, embedded metadata, or credits. The removal or alteration of copyright management information is separately prohibited under 17 U.S.C. § 1202.

4. Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Automated Collection

This category did not exist when the original policy was written. It now governs the most common form of unauthorized use.

No text, image, video, audio, or metadata from terezakis.com or from the artist's affiliated sites may be scraped, crawled, harvested, or copied for the purpose of training, fine-tuning, evaluating, or benchmarking any machine learning or generative artificial intelligence model, or for inclusion in any dataset distributed for those purposes, whether commercial or described as research.
The artist expressly reserves all rights in these works with respect to text and data mining, including the reservation provided for under Article 4(3) of Directive (EU) 2019/790. This reservation is also expressed in machine-readable form in the site's robots.txt and TDM reservation headers.
Do not use the works, their titles, or the artist's name as prompts, reference images, or "style" instructions to generate derivative images, video, sound, or text, and do not present machine-generated output as being by, after, or in the manner of Peter Terezakis.
Retrieving and reproducing site content through automated agents beyond a brief excerpt for purposes of citation is not permitted.

5. Photographing and Recording Installations

Visitors to exhibitions may photograph or record installations for personal, non-commercial use and may share such images on social media with credit, unless the venue provides otherwise. Commercial photography or filming, drone imaging, three-dimensional scanning, photogrammetry, and LiDAR capture of an installation require written permission. Performance components of a work may also involve the rights of collaborating artists, which must be cleared separately.

6. Uses That Are Not Permitted

Merchandise, blotter art, party fliers, event promotion, and projections at parties, clubs, or events without prior approval.
Promotion of a private practice or business of any kind, including business cards, brochures, websites, pitch decks, and presentations.
Self-published books, workbooks, calendars, print-on-demand products, and comparable media.
Minting any work, image, or documentation as a non-fungible token or other blockchain asset, or listing such an asset on any marketplace.
Incorporation into another work: collage, remix, sampling, compositing, customization, adaptation, or any derivative work, whether made by hand or by machine.

Because reproduction of the work implies the artist's endorsement, reproduction rights beyond the free uses described above are reserved for projects that benefit the continued work of Sacred Sky Sacred Earth or that the artist specifically endorses.

7. Attribution and Integrity

Under the Visual Artists Rights Act (17 U.S.C. § 106A), the artist holds rights of attribution and integrity in works of visual art, independent of the ownership of any copy or of the copyright itself. Always attribute the work to Peter Terezakis; never present a modified version as his; and never attribute to him a work he did not make.

8. Enforcement

Uploading, downloading, or distributing protected works without the authority of the copyright owner infringes the owner's exclusive rights of reproduction and distribution. Under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c), a court may award statutory damages of between $750 and $30,000 for each work infringed and, where willful infringement is proven, up to $150,000 for each work; under § 505 an infringer may also be liable for the copyright owner's attorney's fees. Notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 512) will be sent to hosting platforms and search engines where infringing material appears.