This is Rochester Gray

What has now become a typical routine...all too quickly.

Is a copy of a copy an original?

The first two images are from Terry Barrett's book Criticizing Photographs (McGraw Hill, 2004) and center around the idea of context. Depending upon how we come into contact with these images (at the Museum of Modern Art, or in an original publication such as Le Pointe for Michael Doisneau) can totally change our reading of them.

In this regard, I took the image off my computer display showing a photograph of Sherrie Levine's sardonic, post-modernist work "After Walker Evans." She straight forwardly made exact copies of his photographs and reproduced them in a show. Her point though is not so straight forward. It has everything to due with authorship of the individual versus rights of the community and has many sophisticated and subtle points and counter points.

Clearly my title for this post is not true, but I do believe its relevant for our culture, especially in the context of the web. What is fair use of an image? At what point does Walker Evan's work (he is long since deceased) become communal property? When work becomes iconic and influential such as Evan's in the context of photography's history, does its authorship become overshadowed by culture and the meanings it applies to such imagery?

The image I photographed came from a sight called AfterWalkerEvans.com created by Michael Mandiberg as a webart piece. Read up to get a better perspective on Sherrie Levine's original work.

I seem to find evidence of genes everywhere but I may be looking to hard...

what else can you do in the ER but wait

On the Mend

Sunday Morning

How work gets done....

Keeping Watch