Exercise 2.4: Is appropriation appropriate?

Read Geoff Dyer’s article on photographers using Google Street View:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jul/14/google-street-view-newphotography?intcmp=239
Also read these posts on WeAreOCA:
http://www.weareoca.com/fine_art/photography-meets-textiles/
http://www.weareoca.com/fine_art/whos-afraid-of-appropriation/

Have a look at the artists mentioned who appropriate images taken by other people and write around 300 words describing your response to artists and photographers working in this way.

Whether or not you feel appropriation is something you might work with at some point, the mapping resources available for free on the internet are an invaluable practical tool for planning landscape shoots of any kind.

If you haven’t yet done so, read ahead to the brief for Assignment Two. Write down your preliminary thoughts and ideas for how you might approach this assignment.

Use Google Maps and/or any other mapping system and print off, photocopy or save some maps of the journey you’re thinking about documenting for this assignment.
Use the map(s) to help identify any details or aspects of the place or route that might (or might not) be of interest.

“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”

― Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review

As Mark Twain says “there are no new ideas” so whether we are taking inspiration, re-inventing the work of others or “appropriating” the work of others and putting our own stamp on it we have been “stealing” the work of others for a very long time. I am often disappointed having thought that I’d come up with an unique idea only to find it has been done before and I often need to read the work of others before I can begin writing on a subject. I am not plagiarising this work merely taking inspiration from the writer.

Is the appropriation of art that seems to evoke emotional responses the same then?

Photography into Tapestry

I saw Grayson Perry, “The Vanity of Small Differences” when it was in Bath as part of a national tour. I was confused about how I felt about this work. It was wonderful, colourful so large and so graphic in it’s analysis of class inspired by Hogarth. However, I wasn’t so bothered about the use of photographs but was more disturbed that the tapestries had been sent abroad to be machine made.

However, nothing can really detract from this remarkable piece of work. It is all what Susan Sontag describes in Notes on Camp,” as estoteric, artifice and exaggeration – something of a private code”, (Sontag S. 2018).

Google Street View

I must admit that I haven’t been the greatest fan of the Google Street View appropriation of images. However, I find the work of Michael Wolf, Jon Rafman and Doug Rickard interesting. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2012/jul/15/photography-google-street-view. Their ability to spot the potential of the background subjects in the images and then frame and crop them is genius. I have scoured the street view images that I have taken and cannot see anything of any interest whatsoever.

Interestingly, I have already taken a number of screen shots from Google maps to inform assignment 2. I hadn’t however, thought of using them as the images in my assignment, although I might consider it now.

References

Casper, J. (2011). Michael Wolf World Press Photo Interview 2011. https://vimeo.com/24782108 (Accessed 12/1/2020)

The Guardian (2012) (online) Photographers using Google Street View – in pictures. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2012/jul/15/photography-google-street-view

OCA. (2013). Appropiation: Photography into tapestry. [Online]. Available at: https://weareoca.com/subject/fine-art/photography-meets-textiles/&gt. (Accessed 12/1/2020)

OCA. (2013). Who’s Afraid of Appropriation? [Online]. Available at: https://www.weareoca.com/subject/fine-art/whos-afraid-of-appropriation/> (Accessed 12/1/2020)

Rafman, J. (2019). Jon Rafman. (online) Jon Rafman. http://9-eyes.com/ (Accessed 12/1/2020)

Sontag S. (2018) Notes on Camp. UK, Penguin Classics (Kindle edition)

Wolf, M. (2019). MICHAEL WOLF PHOTOGRAPHY. [online] Photomichaelwolf.com. http://photomichaelwolf.com (Accessed 12/1/2020)