Anonymous work

This image of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was chosen as the most famous picture by an anonymous photographer by The Photograph Book (1997) (ISBN 0-7148-3937-X), a book of 500 photographs by 500 famous photographers

Anonymous works are works, such as art or literature, that have an anonymous, undisclosed, or unknown creator or author. In the case of very old works, the author's name may simply be lost over the course of history and time. There are a number of reasons anonymous works arise.

Description

Anonymous works are works, such as art or literature, that have an anonymous, undisclosed, or unknown creator or author. In the United States, it is legally defined as "a work on the copies or phonorecords of which no natural person is identified as author."^[1]

Explanations

In the case of very old works, the author's name may simply be lost over the course of history and time. In such cases the author is often referred to as Anonymus, the Latin form of "anonymous". In other cases, the creator's name is intentionally kept secret. The author's reasons may vary from fear of persecution to protection of his or her reputation. Legal reasons may also bar an author from self-identifying, as in 2007, when The Washington Post published an article by an anonymous author—who would have preferred to be named—describing the use of national security letters by the FBI.

See also

• Anonymous post
• Anonymous blog
• List of anonymously published works
• List of works published under a pseudonym
• List of anonymous masters
• Notname

References