I'm often quite interested in where artists/photographers appropriate photographs rather than take them (Thomas Ruth, the artist who I saw at the Aperture office, but still haven't got the name of(!)). And I was very interested to hear about an artist who had started to use his phone within GTA V to take photos within the game. As additional layers of subtext here, he posts them on Flickr - as the icing on the cake, a Google search on this brings up an article on him and this activity in the Daily Mail.
Daily Mail - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2433399/GTA-V-photographer-Phil-Rose-captures-images-games-camera.html
Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/groups/landscapesoflossantos/pool/
Phil Rose's website - http://www.philrosephoto.com
The core of this lies in the stylized americana and the popcorn, almost ready-made HDR look in the game.
The layers of irony come thick and fast here. I don't know where to start!
What is perhaps dissapointing (or perhaps just another layer or irony), is that the photographer who started the "craze" actually seems to take this genre of popular photography in the real world too (as do the other flickr submitters that I bothered to check). So there is a potential ernestness to these as valid photographs - at least if they were taken in the real world? In many ways they do represent the kind of photographs that would typically be very popular on Flickr. And the Daily Mail seems to like them.....
So as serious photography struggles to find it's place, will another nail in the coffin be the virtualisation of the photography process itself? Or maybe that will just mark the difference between the sacred and the profane.
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