Immagine eri, immagine tornerai: pratiche di appropriazione e postproduzione nella cosplay photography

At a general level, the cultural practice known as cosplay may be considered a form of postproduction as it is based on appropriation and reuse of preexisting texts; more specifically, cosplay photographs represent a further link on the long chain of reworkings of the source material. Nevertheless, while cosplayers embody and perform images extrapolated from anime series or videogames, some photographers use their portraits as part of a digital collage that conversely bring them back to the realm of images. By means of an accurate work of editing, these prosumers (coming from all over the world but sharing a common visual vocabulary) inscribe the cosplayers’ portraits into digital landscapes as close as possible to the primary source. These newly produced images express at once both the self-portrait nature of cosplaying, enhancing and visualizing otherwise invisible traits of these fans’ affection towards the source material, and professional/fan identity of the photographer himself. In some cases, however, images seem to prevail on cosplayers.