But today, I want to make one thing absolutely clear: I have no intention of making money from this phenomenon.
I do not want to turn this Pink Panther into a brand, a merchandising opportunity, or a little personal business built on rebellion. I do not want to sell T-shirts, posters, or objects bearing her image to capitalize on a collective emotion. I do not want to trademark a slogan, claim exclusive ownership of a symbol, or demand money from those who reproduce my creations. I did not embark on this adventure to become the owner of a popular movement. I am a photographer, filmmaker, and writer. I create images so they can live, not so they can be locked away behind a cash register.
So use my images. Share them. Let them travel. Print them. Put them on walls. Reinvent them. Do whatever you wish with them. To the extent that I own the relevant rights, I am making them freely available, without asking for payment. My wish is for them to belong to as many people as possible and to circulate as freely as they can, in the spirit of the public domain. If you wish to mention my name, I will be delighted. If you do not, what matters most to me is that these images continue to live.
Because something extraordinary has happened with this Pink Panther. At first, there was a fabricated image, a fiction, a popular cartoon character placed in an absurd yet strangely evocative situation: a pink, peaceful, almost childlike creature facing the force of a water cannon during a Paris demonstration. An improbable image, both funny and melancholy. But very quickly, that image ceased to belong to me in any symbolic sense.
Thousands of people projected their own feelings onto it, their own anger, their hopes, and their need for tenderness. Some saw a courageous protester. Others saw a generation refusing to remain silent. Others still saw a fragile being facing an overwhelming machine. And many simply recognized a part of themselves.
That, to me, is what makes this so beautiful. An individual image became a collective emotion.
From that moment on, trying to claim exclusive symbolic ownership of it would seem almost indecent to me. How could I pretend to own the emotions it inspires in a Brazilian student, an Argentinian mother, a young French person, or a stranger discovering it on the other side of the world? How could I charge money for an image into which people have poured their dreams, their wounds, and their aspirations?
I know perfectly well that we live in a society where everything eventually becomes a product. Every success turns into a commercial opportunity, every viral phenomenon into a potential market, every emotion into another chance to monetize attention. This logic has become so natural that we almost forget another possibility exists: creating something and giving it away. Simply because we want to.
That does not mean artists do not deserve to be paid for their work. Quite the opposite. I have always defended the need to respect creative work and those who make a living from it. But an artist must also have the freedom to decide that a particular work is a gift, that nothing is expected in return except the freedom to see it circulate.
Of course, I do not own the original Pink Panther character, nor do I claim to control the rights that others hold over her. I am speaking here about my own images, compositions, films, and artistic intentions. I simply want to relinquish, as far as the law allows, the idea of reserving their economic exploitation exclusively for myself.
I also want to emphasize that this Pink Panther was never intended to be a symbol of hatred. She does not call for smashing things, destruction, or violence against anyone. She is not directed against police officers as human beings. To me, she represents a form of poetic resistance, a way of responding to the brutality of the world through imagination, humor, tenderness, and sometimes absurdity. She may express anger, but that anger does not have to turn into hatred.
I want a child to be able to smile when looking at her, a protester to recognize themselves in her, a police officer to see something touching in her, and an artist to use her as inspiration for something entirely new.
I want her to escape those who claim to hold the absolute truth, every attempt at partisan appropriation, and every commercial temptation, including my own.
Some people may find this approach naive. So be it. I prefer the innocence of sharing to the cynicism of exploitation. I would rather see my images reproduced a million times without earning a penny than lock them away in an online store. I would rather see them used to make people smile, think, dream, or simply feel less alone.
I am happy to have helped bring this phenomenon into existence. I am not going to pretend to be falsely modest: seeing one’s creations touch so many people is an extraordinary feeling for an artist. But I also know that no creator builds a worldwide phenomenon alone. It is the people who look at images, share them, comment on them, transform them, and make them their own who give them a universal life.
I helped create the images. You turned them into a symbol. And that symbol now belongs to you.
So if you happen to see my Pink Panther on a wall in Buenos Aires, on a protest sign in Paris, on a screen in São Paulo, or in a video made by someone I will never meet, do not ask how much money her creator is making.
Ask yourself instead why she has traveled so far.
Perhaps because, in a world where almost everything has a price, some things still have value precisely because we refuse to sell them.
The Pink Panther of Paris is not for sale. She is meant to be shared.
And if this adventure is to leave anything behind, I would like it to be this very simple idea: the most beautiful images are not necessarily the ones we own, but the ones we give away.
