Peter Magubane's famous photo of a Sophiatown resident being forcibly removed from her home in 1955 is widely regarded as a valued piece of South African history.
But it has been "expropriated" by a US conceptual artist who is accused of plagiarising several historic shots by South African photographers.
Hank Willis Thomas's controversial artworks were shown at the FNB Joburg Art Fair at the Goodman Gallery this month.
His body of work included photographs taken by Magubane, Graeme Williams and former Beeld photographer Jan Hamman, who died in 2004. The only changes to the original photos are that they have been enlarged and drained of colour or had a colour wash added.
Thomas did not ask permission to use the photos, which he sells for about R500,000.
Williams said this week that a US firm of attorneys had offered to represent him pro bono in an infringement-of-copyright lawsuit regarding his 1991 photograph taken in Thokoza. The image came to symbolise the shift in power from the apartheid government, showing as it does a group of black school children mocking white, seemingly apathetic, policemen.
The Magubane family are also taking the matter further. "The family is consulting further and receiving advice on the matter," said Magubane's daughter Sikile Magubane.
She said the family are disappointed at how Magubane's work has been "defaced".
Several other Magubane images were used by Thomas in a collage. They are also unaltered except for a solid wash of colour over them.
Magubane, 86, said he regretted not being asked for permission to use his photographs.
"Several people in the past have used my photos for their art, but they have always come to me first. I think it's respectful to do so. Maybe he thought I was dead."
Williams's image was removed by the gallery when he complained on September 6, before the opening of the art fair the following day. As Magubane was not aware that his images were used, he could not ask that they be taken down.
A version of Hamman's 1976 photo of two Soweto teenagers kneeling in front of policemen, with their hands in the air showing the peace sign, was also not removed.
Thomas denies his art infringes on the rights of the original artists.
"What I am doing is no different from land expropriation without compensation," he told the Sunday Times.
"I feel like I claimed it [the image] for alternative use and then apologised. Now he [Williams] wants to punish me as 'the American colonialist'. Our hero Mandela was about truth and reconciliation, but there is a [Julius] Malema undertone in some people's response," said the California artist.
Williams has been very public about his disapproval of the work and asked for an apology from Thomas.
What he got instead was an offer to keep the work for a year, then discuss its "new meaning" - a proposal he calls ludicrous.
"He was 15, living in America. I was there [in Thokoza]. I don't know what more he can say about that moment in history."
The work was priced at $36,000 (over R500,000). Thomas said the gallery determined the price. The gallery refused to say what the Magubane pieces were priced at.
Thomas said he felt he had "inherited" the works. "I get it from archives and from the internet. My mistake is not knowing whose work I was referencing and, once I found out, my mistake was not going to the artist."
Magubane's long-time friend and manager, David Meyer-Gollan, said Thomas had missed an opportunity to work with a legend.
"This man was there for every major struggle event. He was jailed for these images, his house was burned down. It's just courtesy [to ask to use the images]."
University of Johannesburg professor Brenda Schmahmann, who is the National Research Foundation research chair in South African art and visual culture, said the trouble with Thomas's use of Williams's image was that it did not read as a parody, pastiche or quotation. "One simply assumes that Thomas rather than Williams is its author. This is a form of plagiarism."
The former director of the Tatham Art Gallery in Pietermaritzburg, Lorna Ferguson, who is an attorney, said: "What I find even more offensive is the unadulterated bilge, masquerading as contemporary art theory, that has been put forward as justification for Thomas's crime."
The gallery's owner, Liza Essers, said it recognised Williams as the originator of the photograph, but stood by its artists...