During his 30-odd years living in Japan, American-born photo collector Rob Oechsle would periodically travel to the United States to scour antique photography shows across the country for now-extinct formats — glass lantern slides, albumen prints, stereo views, and the like. One such image Oechsle acquired, a Chinese photograph from the 1920s depicting riverboats in a crowded Canton canal, was originally a slide in the collection of the New York State Education Department. Almost 100 years later,that same image is back in New York, though in a slightly different form: as one of the 10 paintings in music legend Bob Dylan's Gagosian show that he apparently copied from classic photos.

That picture is one of six from Oechsle's collection that currently appear as Dylan paintings in the "Asia Series" show, which the Madison Avenue gallery originally advertised as being inspired by the singer's travels through that continent. How did that come to be? Some background: For years, Oechsle profited from his collection of antique pictures —which at one point consisted of more than 65,000 images — by allowing publishinghouses, television companies, artists, and documentary filmmakers to reuse them for a fee. Then, after shutting down his agency five years ago to come care for his elderly parents in the U.S., he discovered Flickr and decided he would share part of his archive, without charge, through an account he opened under the username Okinawa Soba.

What would have brought the 70-year-old Dylan to the obscure Flickr page is unclear, but, according to Oechsle,the paintings even copy the photostream's cropping. ARTINFO spoke to the photography collector about how he found out about his strange new connection with Dylan — who is now said to have copied old photographs of Brazil for a 2010 Denmark show, too.

Click here to see the paintings and the original photos side by side.

Why did you decide to start putting your prized photos on Flickr?

I decided a lot ofpeople don't know about Japanese photography, they don't know about Asia— why don't I be a photo philanthropist and get the rest of these archives mad at me and put up a bunch of pictures so people can enjoy them, use them, recreate them copyright-free. My original intent about four years ago was to put up 300 photos. Bloggers could use these things to decorate their blogs; authors could use them for their books. Ninety-nine percent of the people who did would give me some kind of credit.

How did you first learn that several paintings from Bob Dylan's Gagosian "Asia Series"werecopied from photos on your Flickr stream?

It all startedwith the Web site Expecting Rain, which was already carrying adiscussion of this. I got an email from somebody that lead to the ExpectingRain site, which I then joined to enter the discussions. I'm a fan of Bob Dylan. If his musiccomes on, I'll lean over and turn that up. Expecting Rain had links to theexhibition, then I clicked them and said, "Oh my god, those are my pictures onthe wall!"

There are some pictures that are online that you can find everywhere, but the ones he used were specifically mine. He has a picture of a horse withMount Fuji in the background, so I Googled search "Horse Mount Fuji" — theonlyone was mine. There's not three sources, it's the only one because I trytofind images that are less common on Flickr. I try to put up images that arerare, unusual, hard to find, so the mathematical odds of Bob Dylan finding fiveor six of these specific images elsewhere is so extreme that, in my mind, itprecluded any other source. Iframed them out, clean them up, repaired the images, and made them attractive sothat if people want to use them, they're a better alternative than some otherrough scan. And of the 18 acrylicpaintings [in the Dylan show], six, or one third, appear to be based on my Flickr post. A Web search onGoogle takes everybody back to Flickr.

So you're theonly owner of these images?

As far as I know, with the exception of the monk image, but others may have them.I believe I'm the only one to have published or posted these particular images. You have to understand these are commercial images that are 90 to 130 yearsold. At that time they didn't just make one, they were published in large numbers as postcards, albumen prints, stereo views, andas lantern slides. Unfortunately, most are relatively hard to find today.

So how didDylan copy the images?

He would take aphoto — I don't want to put down Bob Dylan's ability, but you can take any photoand put it in Photoshop, and you can click Watercolor, and it will all bebrushstrokes, or oil. There are so many programs that will artisticallyinterpret a photo for you. In a similarsense, rather than using the computer, apparently Bob Dylan did the samebasicthing, using his own brain. I don't know if he used an overhead projector, or agrid. Some of them appear to be free-form.

Are there any discrepancies between the images in Dylan's paintings and the photos?

With every picture frommy own photostream on Flickr there are varying degrees of accuracy as to howclosely he adhered to the original photographs. For example, the scene in China — the riverboats on the canal in Canton — he called that Shanghai. And in all of the inferences from Gagosian and the interviews, he paintedthese from his experiences in Asia! In gallery three, a painting titled "Mae Ling" — which is a Chinese girl's name — is really a Japanese Ainu, a native girl from Hokkaido. If he had reallybeen to Shanghai or Canton or whatever, he would know the location of thesepictures. If he had taken the pictures himself, he would have been a kid, or not born yet.

What did you notice when you went to the show to see Dylan's paintingsfirsthand?

It was of the Chinese couple, and it has a dome acrossthe top. On the original photos it's actually cut off, so Bob,I don't think he knew this, that's the die-cut edge, they cut it. The top ofthat picture is not a Bob Dylan creation. One hundred and ten years ago they printed thatpicture, and somebody put it in the die-cutter and cut the dome off, andgluedit down to a piece of cardboard. It was a stereo view. I allowed thedie-cut dome to remain, which Idon't do all the time either.

The catalogue has also helped me confirm that, for another four of my photos, he exactly followed my own Flickr-posted crop lines. The Okinawa Soba re-compositions were very different than the original public domain images upon which my Flickr postings were based.

What do youthink of Bob Dylan copying the photographs?

Before I was evenaware of that, I already had become numb to that situation, because it hashappened so many times to me over the past 25 years. But Gagosian saidthis is his visual record — wow, what a great story. There is only one problem.It's not true. It would have been nice if Bob Dylan had mentioned the sourceof hisinspiration for all 18 of the paintings.

So heduplicated all of your retouches?

Bob Dylanfollowed my own cropping amazingly except for one image, and that was themonk. That was his broadest interpretation. I know the face anywhere — the Kimbei Kusakabe photo of the praying priest. I would say it's 1880s, the priest with his head down. There's only onelike that in the world. In the painting the kimono is different, he spread the fingers apart, but he couldn't havegotten that anywhere else to start with it because it's part of my Flickrgroup, and I went online, and apparently I'm the only one who has that up onGoogle.

So far, 10 ofhis 18 "Asia Series" paintings have been based on antique images. Do think therest stemmed from old photographs as well?

I think they allare. There's two that I've been asked about, and they look familiar to me. Ieventually will find it. There's a Japanesescribe, someone asked me to identify that, that's probably one of the others.I'm sure he has my tags there, the cropping is exactly the same.

While Gagosianoriginally said the paintings were based on Dylan's travels, on Mondaythe gallery released a statement that also listed archival images andphotographs as sources for the paintings. What do you think of that?

I saw that. Mostly from real life, they say, and buried down in the list on things thatinspired him is the word "photographs." And somehow, Dylan apologists thinkBob can do no wrong. They'll just say, "That Bob Dylan, he's such a rascal."

Are you bitterthat he copied images from your Flickr photostream without giving credit?

I'm not bent outof shape at all. People have used my images for paintings that look better thanthe original. Usually all these folks credit my Flickr stream. But if you justthrow something up on a wall and don't say where it's from orwhat it means it's more misleading than it would have been if the artistsaid an honest statement. It was bogus.

Would you likean apology from Dylan?

Nope, I can't be upset becauseon myFlickr site I clearly state these pictures are free for everybody to use, freeto convert to art, to use them and have fun. Mine were public domain images, andI'm used to not getting credit. Plus I know Bob's reported history for lifting for hissongs.I think Bob subscribes to the old adage that good artists borrow and greatartists steal. But even though Bobdid nothing illegal, it's always nice when a social ethic is exercised where wesay thank you, we give credit where credit is due, and we mention sources.There's a deeper ethic among artists however, not getting credit or thanks. I'vealready been over that hump for 20 years. For me, it was here we go again.Copying other sources and putting up as his own. Especially with the implicationthat was given out by Gagosian that it was drawn from his visual journal, it left a bad taste in my mouth. That anything up on the web, you can steal it,and use it.