They did distribute it - they uploaded it to Twitter with the intent that Twitter would send it to anyone who read their Tweet - but it's still absurd to call this copyright infringement - it has to be fair use to use some photo of a real person even though every photo might be the intellectual property of some photographer or another.
Even if that wasn't the case, the Tolkien Society doesn't deserve to call itself the Tolkien Society if they're more interested in taking this photo out of circulation than sharing it.
IANAL but I don't think it's generically fair use to use a photo to talk about someone. You may seek one in the public domain or just use words to say what you want. That's why most of the photos were removed from Wikipedia at some point and replaced with mostly lower quality ones that were in the public domain.
They did distribute it - they uploaded it to Twitter with the intent that Twitter would send it to anyone who read their Tweet - but it's still absurd to call this copyright infringement - it has to be fair use to use some photo of a real person even though every photo might be the intellectual property of some photographer or another.
Even if that wasn't the case, the Tolkien Society doesn't deserve to call itself the Tolkien Society if they're more interested in taking this photo out of circulation than sharing it.
IANAL but I don't think it's generically fair use to use a photo to talk about someone. You may seek one in the public domain or just use words to say what you want. That's why most of the photos were removed from Wikipedia at some point and replaced with mostly lower quality ones that were in the public domain.