Appropriation – “the deliberate reworking of images and styles from earlier, well-known works of art”
For this assignment, we were tasked with taking photographs of pre-existing photos and editing them to be able to claim them as our own. This is known as appropriation and was most famously done by Richard Prince who took a photograph of an already published advert and auctioned his photo for over $1 million. Prince’s work received mixed reactions with some denouncing the appropriation as “stealing” and others saying it was perfectly fine to use “raw materials” from other artists to create their own work.
http://100photos.time.com/photos/richard-prince-cowboy
https://www.guggenheim.org/arts-curriculum/topic/cowboys
I chose to photograph the box of a children’s toy I came across in a toy store. This particular product caught my attention as it is very similar to a doll that I had when I was a child. The box intrigued me as the colours on it were mostly pink; its target audience was clearly young girls. When I was editing the photograph, I decided to apply a black and white effect as this removed the gender-specific aspect and means the doll could also be advertised to boys as well as girls.
