For this brief, I was tasked with researching photographers and understanding how you can take an image and manipulate it in order to completely change the message. I started off with researching Richard Prince, as we were introduced to him by our lecturers. He is famous for a particular image of a cowboy that he took from an advert and sold as his work. He is controversial in his practices, and this gave me an idea for my own appropriation work. He got people talking and whether that is a good or a bad thing, his work was being spoken about and people were interested in it due to the controversial nature of his work. Whilst I was researching for inspiration, I came across famous images, and one of the moon landing immediately made me think of the conspiracy theory that the moon landing never happened and it was faked. This was my starting point, and it was partly due to thinking differently upon viewing Richard Prince’s talked about work. Also, one of the reasons he is so talked about is because he barely changes anything about the images, so this made me think that you don’t need to go overboard on changing every little detail in order to change the message. As long as the message you are putting across is clear I don’t think it matters how much editing you have done.
Although I liked the hard hitting aspect of Richard Prince’s work, I wanted to perhaps have a humorous stance on my images. I researched the collage work of Kurt Schwitters, as I knew that he liked to take parts of different images and put them together to completely change an image and create something entirely different. Whilst from Richard Prince I learned that you don’t need to go overboard on editing, from Kurt Schwitters’ work I learned that sometimes it can be good to use a lot of images and combine them to make something new. I used this technique with my last image which is of the Twin Towers, as I had an image in my mind that would be hard hitting, so I used a lot of editing in order to achieve this.
My images
When approaching this brief, I decided that the place to start would be to research the most recognizable famous photographs. Upon finding this image of the first moon landing in 1969, I knew that I wanted to manipulate the image to make it appear to be a fake, thus going with the idea of the moon landing conspiracy theories. To complete this, I used a simple technique to select the black background of the original image, and then delete it in order to place the green screen onto the image. I was pleased with how the final image turned out, as the message was put across as I had hoped, and this lead me to continue the idea of conspiracy theories.
I continued with the idea of conspiracy theories, and wanted to create an image that was perhaps less controversial than the other two images that I had manipulated. This was also a simple manipulation, as I removed the individuals from the photographs, resized them, and then inserted them into the image of the crop circles. I thought this image was quite entertaining, as opposed to hard hitting, and that was what I was aiming for. I also decreased the brightness of all of the images involved in the final piece, as they were quite pixelated and of I continued with the idea of conspiracy theories, and wanted to create an image that was perhaps less controversial than the other two images that I had manipulated. This was also a simple manipulation, as I removed the individuals from the photographs, resized them, and then inserted them into the image of the crop circles. I thought this image was quite entertaining, as opposed to hard hitting, and that was what I was aiming for. I also decreased the brightness of all of the images involved in the final piece, as they were quite pixelated and of poor quality.
This is my favourite image out of the final three appropriation images, as this was something that took me quite a while to finish. For this, my initial ideas were to have the twin towers behind a window in the Oval office, but I could not find a photograph with a window big enough to really see the towers. I then had to find an image with George W. Bush sitting casually at his desk, and this took me a long time, and the image that I chose in the end was a very small image unfortunately. I had hoped to have him holding a Playstation controller, but as he is holding a phone in the image, I settled for having it sitting on his lap – this is something that I didn’t want to make obvious, as the main focus was on the contrast between Bush and the towers. As with the other two images, I removed the background of the photograph on Bush, and placed the 9/11 image onto it. I then resized and rotated the controller and put that onto the image. Finally I desaturated the entire image, as I thought that this looked better as the images toned in with one another well.
References
*All images used for my appropriation work were found on Google
Gagosian Gallery (2016) Richard Prince. Available from: http://www.gagosian.com/artists/richard-prince. [accessed 25 March 2016]
Tate (2016) Kurt Schwitters 1887 – 1948. Available from: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/kurt-schwitters-1912 [accessed 25 March 2016]