It’s A Bad Atmosphere.
There are many ways of appropriating images. One way of re appropriating an image is much more effective and much less subtle than the way other re-photographers might work. An example of this is Richard Prince. Richard Prince is a re-photographer most famous for him image “cowboys”(http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/images/hb/hb_2000.272.jpg), but I don’t feel that this type of re appropriating photography is effective in convaying some sort of message, therefore I feel I will stay away from this type of photography as its controversial and doesn’t include the meaning and message I would like to put across in my re-appropriated photos.
Upon doing research into AdBuster’s campaigns, I found a few photos that sparked my imagination and made me think about how i would re-approprate a photograph.
These include some of my inspirations:


For me, this style of remixing or re appropriating images is the most effective way of getting a message across when you don’t agree with a certain company or brand.
Another good example of this is with Peta (http://www.peta.org.uk/media/adverts/) who also take the same approach, by making a statement by re appropriating images to get across their statement in such a smart way.
These photo’s have inspired me in such away to get across a political statement in which I believe in using the same style of image manipulation that the AdBuster’s campaigns use.
Another photographer that influenced me was Erika Gentry, and her piece “Guys Who Like Me”. Erika re constructed Robert Indiana’s iconic “LOVE” postage stamp. Erkia believed her mosaic symbolised dating websites where we like each other based on looks until they find “love” or leave online dating all together.

This image was the first draft for my “It’s A Bad Atmosphere” piece.
I have inspired to create my first appropriation photo to draw attention to the atmospheres and working conditions of people in sweatshops abroad and in third world countries and found the perfect opportunity to do so with one of Primark (A clothing shop notorious for its awful working conditions in their sweatshops).
Upon looking at my first draft photo I thought it would be more interesting to physically create the new photo using cut outs from a local takeaway menu and sticking the letters over the top of a primark atmosphere label in order to create the slogan “It’s A Bad Atmosphere”.
As a working draft I have decided that I would like to physically create this image onto a label using newspaper or poster calligraphy and sticking it onto a physical Primark Atmosphere Clothing label.
Abused
My second re-appropriation of an image is from this anti heroin advert. I have chosen to re appropriate this image in a way that shows the subject with her bruises and bad skin, looking in a direction and looking slightly depressed. I have done this in an ironic way to make her look like she is being abused, when really she is the abuser of the substance. This piece has a message behind it. But it is very subtle…
It’s a bad Atmosphere
Creating The Piece:
Creating the physical copy was easy:
I first started out by cutting out each individual letter of the text out of a local takeaway menu and laid them out on my worktop to make sure the sizes of each individual letter didn’t look odd in comparison to one another. After this I weighed up the sizes and decided to crop down the label into a more of a square as it looks aesthetically pleasing and looks more professional as the scale of my text overlay now fits it more. The final part included placing the individual letters of text into a dab of glue and carefully placing the text onto the label onto the top left of the label. I did this because we as English speaking humans nalyse images from the left to the right of the image, much like how we read, therefore it doesn’t look odd and the message is easier for the audience to subconsciously read.
Abused
Making my “abused” peace I simply cropped out the text to remove all un subtle meanings from the photograph.
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