Title: Untitled (After Walker Evans)
Artist: Sherrie Levine
Place of Origin: USA
Date: 1981
Dimensions: 5 1/16” x 3 7/8”
Materials: gelatin silver print
Walker Evans was a photographer of the Great Depression, capturing moments of poverty and human strength in the 1930s. His photos were a government-requested attempt to preserve the past for future generations. In 1981, Sherrie Levine took photos of the Walker Evans’s photos and displayed them as art unto themselves. Her art show calls into question copyright law and forces the viewer to ask if a work really belongs to the artist. It may be argued that, in re-photographing an existing photograph, Levine is commenting on our inability to recapture the past and the fact that nothing is truly original. If this is true and the meaning of this 1936 photo of a migrant woman has been changed by Levine’s process, viewers must also wonder if art is determined by the idea behind it. Is this the same as Wiley and Muniz using images from artwork created by others in the past to add meaning, or is it too close of a copy to be called anything other than that? Levine adds new interpretations to these photographs that were not there before, but does that make her an artist? Is this idea not truly hers either? There is a history of the artistic quality of photography being questioned, since it is thought to capture reality rather than require any artistic skill. Does creativity or originality make someone an artist?
Conversation 