Kip Praslowicz’s recent photo project is sort of like those free-association tests used by psychologists. For example, I show you a picture by Andreas Gursky and you tell me the first word that pops into your head.
Money.
William Eggleston…. Color. Joel-Peter Witkin…. Weird. You get the point. To create the project Praslowicz took famous photos and then overlayed specially designed watermarks that reflect the most well-known attributes of the photographer who took them.
After Gursky set the record for the most expensive photo ever ($4.3 million) it’s no wonder dollar signs are what Praslowicz plastered over the famous Rhine II photo.
And Eggleston, the godfather of color, gets a disco-era, mustard-colored font to reflect the bright flower-patterned sofa featured in the photo.
Praslowicz says he originally designed the project as a way to comment on the practice of watermarking, which can often get out of hand, especially when photographers spend more time making the watermark than they do making the photo.
“I completely understand why some photographers need watermarks and sign their images,” he says. “This wasn’t to say ‘Hey, you’re stupid if you mark your image’ or anything. Just every so often I come across one that completely takes over most of the image, or are done in such a way and I find them nothing short of comical.”
The rub here is that the famous photographers he’s included in his edit don’t need a watermark because their photos are already iconic. No one is going to try and pass off a Henri Cartier Bresson picture as their own unless they’ve lost their mind.
“I just thought it would be fun to do a design experiment figuring out what terrible ways these famous photos could be watermarked if they didn’t have the fame to back them up,” Praslowicz says.
Some of these photos are easier to dissect than others and we’d be curious to know what other photographers you would include and what kind of watermarks you would put on their photos.
