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I'm really sure you have an IP lawyer on retainer..

Although, you are probably right in the circumstances discussed above, however, what about something like this:

you take an artistic photo of posters on a building wall in a city street. It's your photograph of a real place, but conaints images that are probably copyrighted..what's the answer here, are you infringing on the indivudual copyrights?

This seems absurd, because it then limits what part of the world an artist (or anyone) can document/represent.

The same argument can be extended I think, to a more general case.

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No...probably. If the picture you took is "artistic" in it's own merrit, and the posters simply are a *part* of it (say, the focus is on a homeless woman dressed in rags, pushing a cart with garbage bags in it, as she moves down the sidewalk in front of the wall with the posters), then no. No copyright infringement. That said, there is nothing to stop Joe Blow who is the artist of one of the posters from suing you...but the case would proably get dismissed during the prelims (the biggest problem with US law; you can sue anyone for *any* reason). Now, if you walked up to the wall of posters, and took a straight-on shot of, say, two of the posters...the artist Joe Blow might have more luck in suing.