Exercise 2.4: Is appropriation appropriate?

Wow! I didn't know that this kind of art existed. A very interesting read for me.

After reading Geoffrey Dyer's article (1) regarding photographers using Google Street Maps, I'm not really sure what I make of this technique. I don't deny that it IS in fact art and it is definitely creative and idividual but is it actually photography? Can they really be labelled as photographers?

Artists? Yes, without a doubt, but the hard part comes because they are producing photographs in this way of working. I cant help but feel this is not actually photography in the general sense, even though the artists are creating a photograph. The typography of these artists work does produce contrasting images though.

Michael Wolf (born 1954) is a German artist and photographer who lives and works in Hong Kong and Paris (3). Wolf's images appear, ironically, very lazy, given the process to find the subject. The cropping and pixelation of the images feel more like CCTV than photographs.

Jon Rafman (born 1981) is a Canadian contemporary artist and filmmaker known for exhibiting found images from Google street view (5). His collection 9-eyes (4) could actually pass for photographs. There is a lot more clarity here than in Wolf's work and more of a formal crop, however the tell tale compass sign in the top corner gives away the photographs secret. It's as though Rafman deliberately kept it in to bring together his images to prove the purpose of the collection.

Doug Rickard (born 1968) studied United States history and sociology before moving to photography (7). Rickard has decided to remove the compass by cleverly cropping it out and there are no other tell tale signs at all. Like Rafman, the images have better clarity and much better framing and cropping and are the most realistic to standard photography, but then how could we tell that they are not 'real' photographs?

But is it photography in the more common way? I'm still doubtful.

With regards to researching areas using this technique for Assignment 2, I have a journey coming up and I am thinking that this journey would be a great subject to document.The idea of 'mapping' is not something that I feel I would venture into in the future but for the purpose of this exercise, I have done just that and mapped out the scenes which would produce the most interesting images.  I will include these images as part of my research for the assignment.



References:
(1) http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/jul/14/google-street-view-new-photography?intcmp=239

(2) http://photomichaelwolf.com

(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Wolf_(photographer)

(4) http://9-eyes.com

(5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Rafman

(8) http://www.dougrickard.com/

(7) http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/newphotography/doug-rickard/