The course material calls for about 300 words on this question, particularly in the light of the use by artists and “photographers” – I use the word cautiously here – of such internet vehicles as Google Earth and, more particularly, Street View. I do not honestly believe this is achievable in any way that does justice to the subject. This is a big topic, perhaps as old as visual art in all its forms itself, and there are lots of issues at stake. Not least there are ethical and legal issues, which I have been struck by their repeated absence, or at best only cursory address, in what I have read so far. I am therefore not even going to try to keep to that word count, but nor am I going to address this in as much detail or with the forensic rigour that it deserves. Rather I will simply make a number of observations in general and upon the practices of specific artists.
One immediate issue I have with much of what I have seen and read is that the word “appropriation” is used rather loosely. On the one hand there are those who, for example, are taking material produced by others and simply by presenting it in a particular way are effectively claiming that work for their own. On the other, are those who take someone else’s work and then use it to produce something new (in which category I do not include those simply making a different edit or juxtaposition).
Throughout art history artists have borrowed, stolen, from each other but despite that what has been produced is something that is the work of the ultimate author. Copying the work of earlier masters has long been a means of training new artists. There is nothing wrong with that, nor in my opinion, taking ideas or elements from earlier existing work to produce something new.
In the field of photography two works spring to mind, simply because they are in my library. The first is Bertolt Brecht’s War Primer (2017). There is no sense of Brecht claiming the photos for his own work but by arranging them as he did and applying his own text he produced something that is very much his own. In a similar way so too have Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin with their updating of that earlier work in War Primer 2 (2011). There is no sense of them seeking to appropriate Brecht’s work as their own, nor the contemporary photos that they have overlaid upon those used by Brecht. Indeed they specifically give credit to the original sources of all of the images that they have used. I do not therefore regard this as a work of “appropriation” either.
This leads me on to the first article cited below on the OCA site. I struggle with the idea of Marc Quinn’s tapestry being in any way an act of appropriation. Certainly he has used a photograph as his starting point and has apparently rendered it faithfully (I have not actually seen it) but what he has done is produce something new, in a different medium, that is not the same as the photograph, and he has not sought to claim the photograph itself. Indeed as the article explicitly points out Quinn obtained the rights to make his new work.
In contrast there is the work of Jon Rafman and Mishka Henner, the former addressed in Geoff Dyer’s article and Henner in the course material. I have serious problems with the work of both. In Rafman’s case I confess I do not really understand what he is doing. He is presenting work by others, albeit a huge corporation, as his own, without, as I note looking at some of the images on his website, even bothering to remove or cover the statement of Google’s copyright (why they have not sued the pants off him is beyond me) and without any sense of him having intervened with the original material to produce something new. All he seems to do is juxtapose them in an apparently random manner. This is why I say I do not understand what he is trying to do, what his themes are, what message he is trying to put across. I regard the comment quoted by Dyer, “By reintroducing the human gaze, I reassert the importance, the uniqueness of the individual”, as little more than self-serving BS. He is taking ideas that come from photography and then seeking to apply them to his random, and apparently rambling, assortment of choices. And it seems to me that to assert that, as Dyer again quotes him, that these are “photographs that no one took and memories that no one has” is similarly self-serving and simply wrong. I struggle to see the relevance of memory here! (I would have expected a bit more of a robust response to this from Dyer, but there we go.) These might not be images that were actively and consciously taken by an individual but they were taken at the instigation and under the control of a company. They did not materialise out of thin air. Someone made this happen. These are not random snapshots of unidentified provenance that just happen to be picked up while walking along the street. To claim them as his own strikes me as naive at best, dishonest at worst.
I similarly have a problem with Henner’s work. I do not feel comfortable with the art-critical view expressed in the course material about his work (specifically the Street View shots of prostitutes waiting for business) operating as a critique about the invasive nature of such photographic technology. Yes, I can see that to an extent it certainly does this. But I do not consider that this is sufficient to take away the charge of voyeurism. The Google cameras are presumably indiscriminate in what they photograph, they simply capture whatever, or whoever, happens to be there at the time. Henner on the other hand has specifically and consciously chosen this particular set of subject matter. His point about invasive technology could have been made with any number of other subjects but this is the one that he chose, very much a male centred gaze of woman who find that in order to make a living they need to be sexually subservient to male desires.
I felt rather more comfortable with his satellite image work, discussed for example in Robert Shore (2014) (pages 14 to 21) but I still have difficulties with the question of whether he has done enough to make a new work rather than just apply his own name to something that already exists. I remain to be convinced that it is enough simply that the images he has used are apparently really quite difficult to find in the first place.
Michael Wolf is an interesting case. What sets him apart from the likes of Rafman and Henner is that he is actually a photographer, and an interesting, innovative, thought-provoking one at that. Again I thought Dyer could have been a bit more questioning rather than simply accepting the Unfortunate Events series as a continuity with his earlier work, something I have difficulty seeing clearly. Shore (pages 226 to 233), unfortunately I felt did not add much. I am therefore left a little ambivalent about his use of Street View. It is not to say that mining the images these commercial enterprises produce is not in itself a valid exercise but I have difficulty with he idea that it is sufficient simply to rely on artistic historical traditions of appropriation. I also still question whether the crop or the edit are themselves sufficient. (I think here that Dyers reference to Blow Up is not quite on point as of course the David Hemmings character was blowing up his own photograph, not taking someone else’s work as his starting point.) I am not hostile to Wolf’s work, as I would have to admit I am to Rafman and Henner, but I remain to be convinced.
One of the tricky questions which I do not see being addressed much, which I have touched upon above in my reference to War Primer, is how much intervention, rather than just finding, editing , and re-presenting obscure material, is enough to make the product new or original. This is though touched upon in the second OCA article in so far as it refers to the work of Richard Prince and the action brought against him by photographer Patrick Cariou. I understand the case originally went against Prince, was later overturned on appeal, but subsequently settled out of court. We are therefore unfortunately left without much guidance (from the courts in New York at least) from this particular case. (My knowledge of intellectual property law, despite having been a lawyer, is unfortunately minimal as this was a subject I never studies or practiced so I cannot offer any thoughts on where we might stand from an English point of view.)
In this regard it is interesting to see the work of Doug Rickard, also mentioned by Dyer. Evidently the source images have been processed and treated in a number of ways, though how is not immediately clear. This does seem to me to make a difference. I also have to admit though that the nature of the subject matter and the social concern that his collection and treatment of these images illustrate – many of these are people on the fringes of society, at least more affluent society and are viewed with a degree of sympathy and not, unlike Henner, in a way that comes across as voyeuristic – and that alone (the element of intention) makes me more accepting of his work.
In doing a bit of research into the Prince case I came upon a 2016 article in the Guardian, cited below, in which I note that Prince had been up to his old tricks again and was once more being sued. I know nothing more of the details of the case or its rights and wrongs. I was though nevertheless struck, most unfavourably, by something he is quoted as having said during the earlier case: “Copyright has never interested me. For most of my life I owned half a stereo, so there was no point in suing me, but that’s changed now and it’s interesting … So, sometimes it’s better not to be successful and well-known and you can get away with much more. I knew that I was stealing 30 years ago but it didn’t matter because no one cared, no one was paying any attention.”
After exceeding the suggested word-count very considerably, do I think appropriation is appropriate? I think the answer is far from straightforward and variable depending on the circumstances. I think much depends, or at least should, on the manner of the appropriation, the intentions behind it, the nature and extent of any intervention or manipulation, including, though not alone, selection, editing, presentation, cropping, and so on. I also think a very important element should come down simply to respect, whether the source work is that of an individual, whether an artist or not, or of a giant corporation (much though I have to confess I do not like Google the product of Street View is their property), and acknowledgment of the prior work and its ownership.
And no, this is not a method of working that I have any particular desire to explore, even if only experimentally. I am happy to take ideas from other people’s work to help make something of my own but not simply to try to take their work into my own oeuvre.
Brecht, B, (2017). War Primer. London: Verso
Bloomberg, A, & Chanarin. O, (2011). War Primer 2. London: MACK
Shore. R, (2014). Post-Photography: The Artist with a Camera. London; Lawrence King
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/jul/14/google-street-view-new-photography
https://www.oca.ac.uk/weareoca/fine-art/photography-meets-textiles/
https://www.oca.ac.uk/weareoca/fine-art/whos-afraid-of-appropriation/
Mark Robinson's OCA Landscape, Place & Environment Blog 