About
The Photographer's Guide to Los Santos effortlessly blends the practical insights of a tourist handbook with the technical depth of a photography manual, incorporating aspects of an exhibition catalogue and providing a revealing look into the art creation process. It serves both as a how-to manual and a critical analysis.
The Photographer’s Guide to Los Santos is an ongoing project that advances research into artistic practices within the context of computer games, with a particular focus on in-game photography, machinima, and digital visual arts. It develops themes and frameworks previously explored in the exhibition How to Win at Photography, with a specific focus on photographic processes within Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar Games, 2013).
The format of a guide, as articulated by Book (2003), situates in-game photography within the framework of 'virtual tourism.' This notion was re-affirmed by the publication of the Rough Guide to Xbox in 2019, which presents video game locations as legitimate tourist destinations. However, The Photographer's Guide to Los Santos transcends mere exploration. It portrays the game world not only as a venue for photographic expeditions but also as a fertile ground for artistic creation, thereby recasting the gamer as a 'game art tourist.' Specifically, this primer presents the environments of Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V) as both a space to be explored and a site for image production, as well as a place to navigate and engage with some of the most significant artworks it has facilitated.
This project integrates diverse experiences from teaching in-game photography as an artistic practice across various educational settings and institutions across Europe, providing resources and tools for students and practitioners keen on exploring this emerging field. The guide serves dual purposes: it acts as a tourist handbook to the game world and a photography manual tailored for the era of in-game photography, complete with tutorials that cover everything from basic game screenshotting to advanced computer programming for creative modding. Through practical exercises and hands-on activities, the project encourages a reevaluation of the game object as a context for creative, subversive, and critical pursuits. These pursuits enable the video game to be played in novel ways, documented, reclaimed, modified or even subverted.
The Photographer's Guide to Los Santos draws inspiration from the concept of 'metaplay,' a creative interaction with games that goes beyond traditional gameplay mechanics and objectives. Metaplay involves using the game environment in unconventional ways, such as photographing game worlds instead of pursuing predefined objectives. This critical and practical handbook owes a significant debt to the artists it features, drawing particular inspiration from several notable projects. These include Gareth Damian Martin’s live streamed workshop Photography Tour of No Man’s Sky, which was part of the Now Play This Festival 2020, Total Refusal and Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis’s 2021 in-game lecture performance and guided tour Everyday Daylight, presented at CCS Paris, and Alan Butler’s epic 2020 live endurance performance Witness to a Changing West, showcased in Screen Walks, along with his innovative 'Content Replication Assignments'. Each of these works exemplifies the transformative potential of integrating artistic expression within virtual environments.
GRAND THEFT AUTO V STUDIES
Los Santos, the satirical rendition of Los Angeles in GTA V, serves as a parallel hub for creative expression. Just as Los Angeles is renowned for its dominance in the film and media industry, Los Santos has emerged as a thriving center for in-game photography and machinima creation. While it might appear limiting to spotlight a single game in discussing the broader trend of in-game photography, GTA V stands out as a beacon of creative output in this realm. This can be attributed to its expansive open-world environment and a dynamic community of dedicated modders, bolstered by a vast user base. Notably, the game boasts a staggering global sales figure of over 200 million copies (Nightingale, 2024).
Launched in 2013, GTA V features a sprawling world map exceeding 80 square kilometers, encompassing both the urban expanse of Los Santos and the rural landscapes of Blaine County. This vast environment is remarkably diverse, including a large desert region, dense forests, several mountains, and beachside towns, in addition to the bustling metropolis of Los Santos. The game intricately simulates the daily activities of hundreds of individual Non-Playable Characters (NPCs), purportedly representing a population of over 4 million, and is home to 28 distinct animal species and more than 800 buildings in GTA V are based on real-life landmarks.
The scale of the photorealistic simulation is matched only by the complexity of the game engine and its code. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of GTA V's modding community, players can harness the game world as a versatile tool. This enables them to create new scenes, take control of algorithmic entities, modify camera angles, and transform the game into a dynamic movie set or photo studio.
GRAND THEFT AUTO V TOURISM
The Photographer's Guide to Los Santos serves as a hybrid of a playful travel guide to the fictitious Los Santos and the star maps distributed to tourists in Hollywood, which point out the homes of movie actors and celebrities. This guide enables players to navigate the game environment while exploring some of the most compelling artworks created with(in) it. It is organized into thematic chapters, each focusing on different artistic practices occurring in various locations of the game world. Accompanying these sections are tutorials and exercises that relate directly to the artworks and the spaces being explored.
The sections explore a variety of approaches and practices associated with established artistic and photographic movements. Each begins with an introductory text that provides insights into the key concepts, contexts, and challenges. Artworks within these categories are presented alongside a curatorial statement that emphasizes their artistic significance. Furthermore, information about the in-game locations where these artworks were produced is included, offering maps and directions to facilitate exploration of these sites in GTA V.
The game environment transforms into a venue for potential 'art tours,' offering insights into the artworks created within GTA V. This unique form of game-based avant-garde tourism provides players with a behind-the-scenes look, allowing them to experience the creation of artworks at their original locations. Although the game's complex algorithms generate dynamic interactions and unexpected outcomes, Los Santos remains perpetually unchanged. Gas stations, shops, and palm trees are frozen in time and place, enabling visitors to witness the exact scenes first encountered by the artists.
GRAND THEFT AUTO V ART EDUCATION
The Photographer’s Guide to Los Santos reimagines video games as a platform for artistic intervention, encouraging users to engage with their mechanics, code, and environment as creative tools. Players are invited to experience Grand Theft Auto V through a form of artistic play that deviates from conventional gameplay, focusing not on progression, competition, and conquest but as a context for creative experimentation and critical examination. Additionally, the game software itself can be manipulated and modified, serving as an instrument for generating new images and interactions. This handbook combines a curatorial approach, guiding users through the exploration of artworks produced in GTA V, with practical advice that empowers artists to create within this digital landscape.
Video games are cultural artifacts that shape identities and produce specific subjectivities through forms of play that follow the intentions of the developer. In this context, we view games primarily as objects to be reclaimed and tools to be deconstructed and reconstructed, both conceptually and literally. In our framework, players are not conceived as passive participants following predetermined sequences dictated by the designers. Instead, they are encouraged to examine the game’s inner workings, opening the “black box” to become critical thinkers and creators. This approach allows players to actively interact with the game, playing with or even challenging its mechanics and narratives.
The Photographer’s Guide to Los Santos is an invaluable resource for workshops aimed at students and artists exploring computer games and seeking to understand how to interact with them creatively. Each section includes a tutorial section that introduces various techniques and strategies for capturing images within GTA V, linked to the relevant examples and locations discussed. The chapters are designed to be followed sequentially, as the tutorials often build on knowledge from previous sections. Accompanying each tutorial are content replication assignments, where readers are encouraged to apply the skills acquired from each chapter to recreate a featured artwork. These tutorials are accessible to newcomers to GTA V and do not require prior experience, although a basic understanding of programming can enhance the experience, particularly in scripting and modding aspects of the game.
CREDITS
The Photographer's Guide to Los Santos is a project created by Marco De Mutiis and Matteo Bittanti.
The guide is the outcome of a larger academic research on in-game photography and includes a series of workshops in international art schools and universities, an exhibition project featuring some of the most important artworks in the field, as well as a publication that brings together the educational, artistic and academic sides of the project.
The authors like to thank all people and institutions who supported the creation and development of The Photographer’s Guide to Los Santos. Many thanks to Sebastian Möring and Barbara Cueto who hosted the very first workshop of the project at ZeM – Brandenburg Center for Media Studies in Potsdam in November 2022. Sincere gratitude also goes to Milo Keller, Marc Latzel, and Ann-Christin Bertrand who allowed GTA V to be taught in photography classrooms at their respective art schools in Switzerland between 2022 and 2024: the Master Photography at École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL) in Lausanne, the Fachklasse für Fotografie at F+F School for Art and Media Design in Zurich (F+F Schule für Kunst und Mediendesign Zürich), and the B.A. Camera Arts at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Hochschule Luzern) in Lucerne. Thanks to IULM University in Milan, for supporting this project and fostering research on in-game photography, machinima and digital media practices that are shaping contemporary visual culture with a series of conferences, workshops, and other initiatives between 2018 and 2024. A warm thank you is extended to Margherita Guerra for hosting the exhibition The Photographer’s Guide to Los Santos as part of Fotofestival Lenzburg 2024. Heartfelt appreciation to Alexandra Pfammatter for proofreading the code and playtesting the manuals in the book. Special thanks to Arihan Jalan for creating and sharing his vectorised maps of San Andreas. Finally, the biggest thanks go to all the students and everyone who engaged with the guide and explored GTA V as photographers and artists, and will hopefully continue to do so through this online and printed publication.
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