Practicing Without A License 1977

Rephotography is a technique for stealing (pirating) already existing images,
simulating rather than copying them, "managing" rather than quoting
them–re-producing their effect and look as naturally as they had been produced when they first appeared. A resemblance more than a reproduction, a rephotograph is essentially an appropriation of what's already real about an existing image and an attempt to add on or additionalize this reality onto
something more real, a virtuoso real–a reality that has the chances of looking
real, but a reality that doesn't have any chances of being real.

The technique is a physical
activity which locates an individual behind a camera, a place from which the
individual can view nothing but the collected image, a place that affords the
opportunity to view exactly how the audience will eventually see the image as
an object and a location from which it is possible for an individual to identify
him or herself as much as an audience as an author.

Appropriation 1978

I think appropriation has to do with the inability of the author/artist to
like his or her own work. Especially if the work is all theirs. I think it's a
lot more satisfying to appropriate, especially if you are attempting to
produce work with a certain believability, an official fiction let's say. If you
take someone else's work and call it your own, you don't have to ask an
audience "to take my word for it". It's not like it started with you and
ended up being guessed at. The effect you want to produce is not that
different from what an audience sometimes experiences when viewing
a good movie. And what's that?

What Cristian Metz called, "a general lowering of wakefulness".