Ages ago, I went to see the photographer Nikki S. Lee give a lecture about her newest project, The Hispanic Project. For those not familiar with Ms. Lee, she’s an artist who immerses herself into a subculture (whether it be Lesbians, Lindy Hoppers or Punks) and when she feels she’s become completely assimilated into that particular culture, she has photos taken of her with her newfound community. She then quits the scene for her next project.

Artistic criticisms aside, one of the most interesting points of discussion to come up in the follow-up Q&A did not revolve around Ms. Lee’s assumptions about the mutability of identity, but the fact that she chose to label herself a “photographer”. While the end result of her projects were indeed photographic evidence of her participation, she was not behind, but in front of, the lens.

This debate is far from contained or resolved: what, exactly, qualifies one as a photographer? Is it technical skill, like Ansel Adams, or is it simply using the photograph as a medium for the way you see the world (like Terry Richardson, for example)?

Such questions arise with Quell, a new photo series from Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky, the creative duo behind Pigeon Projects (editorial disclaimer: Brian is my cousin). Quell is a series of low-resolution, noisy images of people (teenagers, mostly) undergoing a sort of voluntary asphyxiation. But the catch is this – Mr. Cassidy and Ms. Shatzky did not take these photos or witness these events. They are screen-captured stills from videos freely posted to YouTube.

“Within the countless hours of crudely captured and degraded self-documentation, we have selected moments in which violence, grace, eroticism and tenderness converge into solitary and painterly images.”

But the question Quell brings up, along with a beautiful, hollow window into the bored and risky lives of it’s subjects, is this: Is this Photography? Are Mr. Cassidy and Ms. Shatzky, in this role, photographers? Or is this something else, some new breed of artistic curation that simply uses the still image as its conduit?

Perhaps the thing I like most about this new series is that it defies that easy codification, not just in style, but where it fits into an entire history and continuum.