Within the workshops and seminars we are learning about the topic ‘Appropriation’ which is “The deliberate reworking of images and styles from well-known works of art” (Oxford Dictionary, 2015). The artist takes a photo that already exists in mainstream media and transforms it. This can be done either simply with text, re-cropping the photo or through other simple editing techniques. The issue with this is that this method is usually done without permission from the owner, which can cause lawsuits. For example, photographer Patrick Cariou filed for copyright infringement against Richard Prince as he apparently wrongly appropriated 35 of his images. Richard Prince was ordered to destroy remaining copies of the catalogue and unsold paintings that make use of Cariou’s photographs.

However, this is technically not classed as plagiarism as the photographers are not attempting to claim the original images as their own, they use the images in different context to convey a different meaning. I personally have mixed feelings on the matter, but I do think that Richard Prince, a well-known appropriation artist should be made to pay for his “artistic license”

Richard Prince is famous for his use of appropriation in his “Cowboy” series; the photos were taken from the Marlboro cigarette advertisements without permission, and then his picture was then later sold for over $1 million.

You can see that within his work all he really did was crop the text out and made the image into a landscape frame. This is supposed to argue the American Dream, but personally I feel like he stole a really nice image and made a ridiculous amount of money from it.

From this fact that Richard Prince got a lot of money from doing not a lot I decided to retaliate. For one of my images I used the same Malboro photo with a photo of James Dean holding a sign edited in. I decided James Dean would be present as he was also the representation of the American Dream and I also liked how I could edit a sign into his hands. I felt like I could easily voice my opinions with this piece and I thought it came out pretty well, apart from the fact I couldn’t figure out how to not make the writing on the sign not pixelated.

This photo was more comical than anything most of my pieces, the photo consists of my photo of Castle Howard (an estate in North Yorkshire) a Turkish McDonald’s sign and my friend Hannah lying dramatically on the floor. I thought those images would work together because it looks like Hannah has collapsed outside of an extremely posh McDonald’s and the photo made me laugh. To other people the photo may not be as funny, but I’m kind of glad I created it for my own amusement. I also tried to make the red light of the sign significantly brighter and I tried to make the photo of Hannah a bit dark so it could blend a bit easier, but I think it still looks the same.

This was one of the more tricker images for me to complete as it involved a lot of research for what I believe to be a rather silly appropriation image. I created a Netflix page but instead of the movies or TV shows having their titles, I changed it to their least popular review title. This was one of the most elongated processes as the sizes weren’t correct and the titles were either too long or too dull or the wall paper I found for the background had writing all over them. This basically was a bit of a mess, and I think the end result is just “okay”. I also couldn’t really find bad reviews for the bottom films so I didn’t add any more to it.