Process

Concept

This brief is where I take a piece of existing photographic media and appropriate it- change the meaning of the photograph through manipulating it.

 

Influences

 Richard Prince- 

“The pictures I went after, ‘stole,’ were too good to be true. They were about wishful thinking, public pictures that happen to appear in the advertising sections of mass- market magazines, pictures not associated with an author…It was their look I was interested in. I wanted to re-present the closest thing to the real thing” – Richard Prince

The image on the right (Untitled (Cowboy) 1989) is Prince’s appropriated image of the Malboro advertisement shown on the left. I rephotographed it and removed the logo and text. It is the first photographic image to sell for $1m.

The image on the right is an appropriated image by Richard Prince and the image on the left is a photograph by Patrick Cariou from his 2000 book Yes, Rasta. In 2009, Cariou brought a copyright infringement against Prince. In 2011 Prince lost the case in court that resulted in defendants having to destroy remaining copies of the catalogue (where some of Prince’s appropriated images where presented) and unsold paintings that made use of Cariou’s photographs

Brian Boucher (2013) Richard Prince Wins Major Victory in Landmark Copyright Suit, Available at: http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/news/richard-prince-wins-major-victory-in-landmark-copyright-suit/ (Accessed: 30/03/2017).

 

Reflection

The majority of weight loss advertisements are aimed at women and the models are edited to unreal perfection. This juxtaposes my edited image of an overweight male used in this weight loss advertisement.

My edited image is more harsh and hurtful because it implying it is not how someone should look in summer. It is more showing the ‘harsh reality’. Weight loss advertisements often show a digitally modified model who often looks ‘unreal’ which makes a lot of people feel they cannot relate to this model. Whereas, in my edited image, people who can relate to the person in it may feel more affected by the advertisement. 

I was looking at photographs related to anorexia and found this image that is quite hard hitting if you know what it is about. Some individuals with anorexia only like to drink water due to it having no calories. Someone without anorexia may find this image quite impactful.

I changed the meaning of this image by removing the words and the calorific values and making it look like three normal bottles of water with no deeper meaning to them.