What is the point of TTTP collecting and storing photographs from
the Internet on its computer cache memory? In typically self-important
company jargon, it claims to do so as part of “its aim to offer
pending aspects of our contemporaneity.” One of these aspects is
copyright, and the collection is a direct challenge to the discourse
and legal framework of copyright. Digital processes and the Internet
have solved the question of the scarcity of photographic images,
including famous art photographs by Cindy Sherman and Salvador
Dalí, as well as more-commercial photographs, including pornographic
images. Not only can an image now be copied an infinite
number of times without any reduction in picture quality; it can also
be distributed worldwide in multiple copies. Joseph Beuys claims,
“every man is an artist.” TTTP’s photography collection demonstrates
that in the age of digital reproduction everyone can become
a collector. That is the essence of a copyright-free society. The label
of exclusivity that the TTTP Photo Collection (ironically) highlights
is thus actually an anachronism. However, the installation display
of the collection’s photographs, printed on regular A4 paper, shows
that the picture quality of official art prints differs from that of homemade
reproductions. Rather than emphasizing one over the other,
however, the collection openly explores this space of difference as a
new aesthetic condition that connects with the avant-garde notion
of art-into-life.