ABSTRACT

This article focuses on a series of selfies taken by a Celebes Crested Macaque monkey who seized a camera from a human photographer and absconded with it. The monkey's smiling self-portraits appeared in the international press, sparking legal and public controversy around issues of copyright, royalties and fair use of the images. Arguably, the very fact of the debate is indicative of the breakdown of the traditional dichotomies that separate the human from the animal, the natural from the technological. It further calls for a reassessment of photography as a unique act that combines all these aspects and yields surprising definitions of agency and creativity. To this end, the article draws on the Vilém Flusser’s philosophy (particularly the concepts of ‘apparatus’ and ‘program’) and develops these to examine the ways in which the automation of photography has changed our perceptions of intention, memory and agency to the point that we are all ‘monkey photographers.’

摘要

这篇文章的重点是由一只 Celebes Crested Macaque 猴子拍摄的一系列自拍照，它从人类摄影师手中抢走了相机并带着它潜逃。这只猴子微笑的自画像出现在国际媒体上，引发了围绕版权、版税和图像合理使用问题的法律和公众争议。可以说，这场辩论的事实表明，将人与动物、自然与技术分开的传统二分法已经崩溃。它进一步呼吁重新评估摄影作为一种独特的行为，它结合了所有这些方面，并产生了对能动性和创造力的惊人定义。为此，