Things to do with a photograph.

 

1. Stitch into it –the black line].
2. Set fire to it.
3. Like it.
4. Consider doing the same to 20+ photographs and stitching them together into a hanging, inspired by Bonnie Epstein. The current plan for the hanging is use litter photographs where the litter becomes more and more dominant as your eye moves from the top to the bottom

I had a long discussion with W. about my concerns about originality/derivation/plagiarism. His view was:

1. All artists are influenced by someone.
2. Were the [few] people who tried Pointillism copying/plagiarising Seurat?

To which my answers were:

1. True
2. Possibly – but at least at first, with his knowledge and encouragement.

I find it a difficult issue – working like Seurat [if you’ve got the patience] seems less derivative than working like Warhol. Where does one draw the line? And using a specific technique, like sewing bit of paper together like Epstein,  seems more derivative than using found paper, as she does.

Of course I’m using my own photos rather than found paper, and I’m feeling a bit happier about it since I did the stitching & burning bits, which also seem more developed from the original.

Curiously, I’m not worried about plagiarising people who stitch into photographs – partly because there are several of them, [most recent discoveries here and here] which maybe makes it a movement, like Pointillism – and partly because none of the people I've discovered are using stitched outlines.

Need to get back to college and ask for a tutorial – because as you can see I'm enthused by this.

Probably won’t last.