I have been a long time fan of New Topographic style man-altered landscape photography and a few years ago I was using the images from those 70's American photographers and inserting my own colour transvestite self-portraits into their original black and white shots. This felt like an act of hommage as well as appropriation and felt personally satisfying. But I did have a slight unease about exploiting their work and yet resisted trying to come up with my own images. As I hadn't photographed landscapes for decades I was apprehensive about it, I'm not entirely sure why now. It was starting at square one again. I was aware I could possibly get away with using those 70's photographs but was risking potentially offending (if ever the work was shown, highly unlikely, but even so) those people (such as Lewis Baltz) who I admired so enormously. Then one Sunday a few years ago I just biked out to a disused quarry and started shooting.
Here's Sam Abell talking about what it feels like to have your photographs appropriated. (I think as this was a commercial shoot it was Marlboro who would perhaps own the rights to reproduction - and they saw no benefit in pursuing Richard Prince.)
Here's Sam Abell talking about what it feels like to have your photographs appropriated. (I think as this was a commercial shoot it was Marlboro who would perhaps own the rights to reproduction - and they saw no benefit in pursuing Richard Prince.)