Photography from its earliest days has been collected, collated, disseminated and put to use in diverse contexts. Thinking of photographs as a communication currency affords us opportunities to re-use, recycle, re-purpose photographs. Why we might engage in these processes of exchange depends on the values we attach to any image and the contexts we apply this re-use.

Throughoutthehistoryofphotographyimageshavejourneyedfrom contexttocontext,shiftingin meaning and effect. Artists have used this strategy to make comment on the relationship of the original and it’s reproduction.

Rather, artists have recognised that images currency is dependent on the contexts of our uses for them. Thinking of photographs as a currency allows us opportunities to question the ideological motivations and priorities that claim a photograph’s credibility as reality or art or as an idea or as a response to the world.

See what you might achieve through appropriating images, to discover whether they are stable or indeed can be manipulated and orientated to reveal new alternative propositions.