on authorship

a while ago i wrote about quoting sources, and this week Marc asked me to no longer add his name to the photographs that i post on this blog (mind you, i'd stopped doing that anyway, but more out of laziness than anything else and assuming that you all know the really good ones are his) because, as he says 'although they were taken by my hand with my camera, they are never the photographs i would have chosen and you combine them in your own way'. i've been thinking about this, how it adds a whole new dimension to the idea of authorship. he says those photographs are mine, not his. so apparently you don't even have to click on the button to be able to claim a picture as your own. then again, would he feel that way if it wasn't his best friend and other half posting them but some unknown person on internet?

and in the end, methinks, who cares? it's all ego games, isn't it? the bottom line is still: either it's a photograph/text/sculpture/ painting that moves you or it isn't. who cares whose camera, whose eye, who clicked, and who bought the film roll?

unless, of course, it pays for the bills. but we're not quite there yet. in the meantime, i like to think of us as a joint venture. in more ways than one.