Most consent failures are not malice. They are missing labels. A collaboration made perfect sense in a chat thread at the gallery door; the images are selling several rooms later; by the time a question arrives, nobody can produce the message where the use of a likeness was agreed. Galleries keep accession records for exactly this reason. Keep the consent record the same way: small, plain, and written before anything crosses the threshold — not reconstructed after the fact.
The smallest sufficient entry
For every real person whose face, body or photographs enter the work, record four things together. Identification — who they are, and how their adulthood was verified. Scope — what may be made: stills, clips, swaps, undress transformations, stated in words rather than assumed. Term — how long the permission runs, and whether it can be withdrawn. The agreement itself — a signed release, or at minimum a written exchange in which the scope is stated and accepted, saved as a file and not left buried inside a chat application.
Habits that keep the record honest
- Scope is literal. Consent to appear in clothed stills is not consent to undress transformations. A new use earns a new line in the record, agreed before the job runs.
- Withdrawal is real. If a collaborator withdraws, production stops and published pieces come down from the wall. A record that cannot execute a withdrawal is not a consent record at all.
- Fictional muses keep a different file. There is no person to consent — but keep the exhibit card and the first frames. “This performer is fictional” is a claim you may one day be asked to show your working for.
- Records hang with the work. The folder for a set holds its consent entry beside the finished files, so an audit never becomes an excavation.
The gate log, kept current
Records decay like everything else. A permission agreed for a year quietly expires while the set it covers is still selling; a collaborator changes address and the withdrawal route in the file no longer reaches them. Review the gate log the way a gallery reviews its loans: on a schedule, not on a crisis. Renew what has lapsed, confirm what has changed, and take down anything whose paperwork no longer stands up. Ten minutes of housekeeping, four times a year, is the entire cost of never having the bad conversation.
When in doubt, close the gate
The arithmetic is uneven. One undocumented set can cost an account, a storefront and a name. The set you declined costs a week of work. NFTPortals’ rules follow the same arithmetic — uploads and swaps require adulthood and consent, and moderation may ask to see the entry. Having it recorded and ready is what professional looks like in this gallery.