Appropriation finalised

So here are my finalised images.

Appropriation development

When I tried exporting the file, the photo I took of Hannah became blurred and distorted. I didn’t really know how to edit this out and from feedback I got it would probably look better if I removed her completely from the image.

So this is my new piece, without Hannah. Due to the fact my original picture of her was pixelated I think the photo looks a lot better.
I wanted to give a kind of Higher Class meets Lower Class kind of vibe as the building itself is Castle Howard and belongs to the Carlisle branch of the Howard family and they are (somewhat) related to Richard the third. As they of a higher class than most people, I felt that it would be funny to include commercialisation into the grounds of the estate. As rumours go the family are losing money so I thought it would be appropriate to place a McDonald’s sign in front of the main entrance.
The McDonald’s sign is a photo I took whilst on holiday in Calis in Turkey down a long stretch of beach at night time. I took the photo because I thought the whole thing was bizarre; there were Turkish themed restaurants everywhere and at the end of a beach there was a McDonald’s stand that only sold McFlurries. Anyway, I used the image and placed it in on the lawn. I would have liked to place the sign so it was a little more angled, but that was the only photo I took of it and I don’t have the photoshop skills to edit it anymore. When I do develop more skills I would like to add a shadow at the bottom of the sign to create more depth to the photo.

Here is the photo in black and white, as you can tell the whole feel of the photo is completely different. Because the architecture is mainly gothic and the sky was getting progressively darker, it looks a lot more sinister than I want it to. Also because it’s black and white the red light from the sign and the light from the tower is dulled and that is what made the original so interesting. Therefore I feel like it would be better if the picture had the natural lighting from before.

Appropriation (beginning)

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.