The internet is flooded with billions of snapshots, many of which are hosted on photo sharing sites like Flickr. With millions more added every day, we often wonder why people decide to take these pictures, why they save them, why they put them on public display. Studying the captions and descriptions of these photographs we see a variety of reasons for their existence. But is it Art? is a new addition to my series of black books exploring the realm of online photo hosting sites. The book contains images that are screenshots, specifically from the website Flickr. Each image shows people’s attempts at creating photography “after”, “based on”, “in the style of” or “inspired by” well-known artists, to varying degrees of success. As individual attempts these samples may be charming, hilarious or bold (and sometimes embarrassing), as a group they raise more interesting questions of originality and authorship.
But Is It Art? was shortlisted for the 2011 Artists’ Book of the Moment award.
2012 (the 2010 Blurb edition is discontinued)
print on demand, b/w
17.5 x 11 cm, 120 pages
softcover, perfect bound
open edition
12 €
