Here's how this works: I "spin" the wheel on my camera roll, so to speak. And blindly select a random picture when it stops.
I happened upon this scene in a funky little design shop in Venice, CA. I couldn't resist pointing my camera at it. During that period of my photographer's journey, I couldn't resist pointing my camera at just about everything. And I have the hard drives and clouds to prove it!
But even as I was giddily recording this moment, I remember thinking about what goes into truly creating a great image. If you happen upon a ready-made Kodak moment, can you, in good conscious, take credit for the results? Is it cheating to capture other people's imaginations?
I know a 'photographer' who enjoys a decent amount of notoriety in some of the international circles in which I also circulate. I put photographer in quotes for two reasons:
- He likes to call himself by some other grandiose, made-up word.
- An overwhelming majority of his work is created by 'capturing' other people's images and blending and manipulating them and then slapping his name on them and calling them his own.
He takes photos of photos. He takes screenshots from movies and television. He's like an artistic zombie, feeding off of the creativity of others. His nudes are from porn and his fantastical, dreamlike tapestries are woven from unraveled elements of existing art.
So is this ethically or morally wrong? And if so, where's the line? Or is it just lazy or unoriginal? Or perhaps it's a mad form of genius in an uninspired world where there's nothing new left to create...
This dilemma haunts me as an artist. Pablo Picasso is widely credited with saying, "Good artists borrow, great artists steal." But there are many artists who came before him who said - and did - more or less the same thing. Of course we riff off of each other. Constantly. But again I must ask: Where's the line?
For me that line seems to blur based on what I'm trying to accomplish. But the one steadfast thing I hold onto is the integrity of transparency. I'm happy to attribute. I'm overjoyed to give credit where credit is due.
I don't think it's possible to do anything completely original. But I do believe in the importance of remaining earnest about that.