Tarek Fahmy: Cultural Critic

I have noticed recently that I have been taking pictures of pictures (still or moving). Whether the pictures that I take are from a computer screen (Youtube + Websites), a street billboard, or moving images (theatre + TV), It seems like I have been reproducing reproductions. I am taking a picture of a picture and making a new image.

At times I don’t even use a camera, I use my Apple’s screen capture feature to take pictures from Youtube videos and other video websites. I then import these images into Photoshop and tweak them to my liking. I crop, color correct, and at times totally change their ‘genetic’ make-up and make them my own.

With the Internet, Youtube, and the blogosphere (there are countless of images that saturate the web) it’s easy to appropriate other people’s images and make them your own. It’s the age of digital and algorithmic recycling. At the same time, i don’t mind when my images are appropriated and are used by others; as long as a profit is not being made from this borrowing/appropriating/stealing.

I am just a small piece of the grand puzzle because my reproduced reproductions eventually will be reproduced by someone else and then these reproductions of reproductions of reproductions will be reproduced again and again, ad infinitum.