"Photographer Thomas Allen creates art out of old novels by cutting out select pieces of covers and insides and photographing them with a meaningful depth of field."

http://www.golberz.com/2010/06/art-of-pulp-novels.html

Interesting work , does he need to cut up old books ? What about the use of photoshop!

:0)

Beautiful and interesting work. I can only marvel at how much effort and money the photographer must have spent to track down and secure the rights to publish bits and pieces of other's work.

Quote - Beautiful and interesting work. I can only marvel at how much effort and money the photographer must have spent to track down and secure the rights to publish bits and pieces of other's work.

I seriously doubt that he did. All of those novels are at least 50 years old and the cover art wasn't used in full so it would fall under the Fair Use doctrine.

Even if the art is at least 50 years old doesn't mean it's not copyrighted anymore, copyrights expire 50 years after the death of the author , not 50 years after it was created.   I'm also not sure that this would fall under fair use unless it would be considered a parody?

He hasn't actually copied anything but just cut the covers up to make something else. I mean if I cut the rooster off the front of a Kellogs Corn Flakes box and make a fridge magnet out of it, does that still breach copyright?

He's using images that were created by others to make his own art so it's possible it's a copyright infringement.  I say possible because maybe he did obtain permission?  Not too sure who would own the copyrights for those covers, if it would be the original artists or the publishing company but yes, he may very well have asked. 

If you were to use the corn flakes rooster to make a fridge magnet for yourself, to put on your own fridge I don't think you'd have a problem, but if you were to start selling those magnets, then yes, since that rooster is probably trademarked by the company that makes corn flakes, you would be in trouble if they were to find out.  ;)

What I'd like to know is why we must concern ourselves with this question in the 1st place.

But, if the work was published between 1923 and December 31, 1963, when there used to be a (non-automatic) "renewal term," the copyright owner may not have renewed the work. If he or she did not renew, the original term of protection (28 years) would now be expired and these works will be in the public domain.

You're probably right, the guy had so many exhibitions all over the place that if he didn't have the right to do that I'm sure he would have been sued a few times already.  I mostly didn't agree with the way you phrased it in your first post, kind of thought you meant everything 50 years or older was most likely public domain and chopping images to create other stuff was fair use.