Appropriation Art Photography

The Wall Street Journal recently profiled The Fine Art of Spying -- basically a look into secret spaces photography, posing for surveillance cameras and art appropriation by trolling sites like Google Street View and YouTube.

I've already highlighted "artist revealer" Trevor Paglen, but new to me were Doug Rickard and Mishka Henner
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Both seem to be doing very well in the art world, even though Rickard just trolls, curates and repackages what is out in cyberspace (although rather than screen grabs he photographs his computer using a tripod).

Doug Rickard from Pier 24 Photography on Vimeo.

The Wall Street journal also did a very nice online slideshow of some of his interesting work.

Wikipedia has these interesting reviews of some of Henner's work (google screengrab below): The Guardian's Sean O'Hagan described it as "either inspired or provocative-to-the-point-of-insulting to the original" whilst Colin Pantall, writing in the British Journal of Photography, described it as "a Churchillian proclamation that far from being over, photography has barely begun."

Here's mine: Rickard and Henner seem to target people walking by in blighted neighborhoods of the Western world. Are they making millions with voyeur/stalker technologically-abated poverty porn where they might get their cameras stolen or worse if they dared enter these spaces themselves?

I've done some of this work myself, appropriating citizen videos to mash into music videos such as this one: