Newspaper Photography. NYT’S. Today (8 July 2017), RICHARD PRINCE

image courtesy RICHARD PRINCE

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The image of today is a picture posted by RICHARD PRINCE on July 8, 2017 on his twitter. It is a reshot by PRINCE from a photography by DAVID YOUNG/DPA that has been published by the New York Times on July 8, 2017.

Rephotography is a technique for stealing (pirating) already existing images,  simulating rather than copying them, “managing” rather than quoting them, re-producing their effect and look as naturally as they had been produced when they first appeared. A resemblance more than a reproduction, a rephotograph is essentially an appropriation of what’s already real about an existing image and an attempt to add on or additionalize this reality onto something more real, a virtuoso real, a reality that has the chances of looking real, but a reality that doesn’t have any chances of being real. The technique is a physical activity which locates an individual behind a camera, a place from which the individual can view nothing but the collected image, a place that affords the opportunity to view exactly how the audience will eventually see the image as an object and a location from which it is possible for an individual to identify him or herself as much as an audience as an author. – excerpt from RICHARD PRINCE, Practising Without A Licence, 1977

Is the act of rephotographing already existing images still a relevant theft?

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