DSDN171: Assignment 9

 "From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the authentic print makes no sense.” I must agree with Walter Benjamin there is no real sense in asking for the authentic, but I believe the age of digital design and mass production has changed how we define and look at "the authentic". Now that we have the ability to reproduce and replicate all forms of art, the intention in which we create art has changes making artist question what is truly the "authentic" or original work. 

Artist Sherrie Levine's work 'After Evens Walker' (see figure 1)  takes the idea of what is the 'authentic' to a philosophical level. The work consist of famous Walker Evans photographs, rephotographed by Levine out of an Evans exhibition catalog, and then presented as Levine's artwork with no further manipulation of the images. The original work already being in a sense a print of a print (a photograph reprinted in a book) Levine adds another layer making it a print of a print of a print, in this process asking the viewer what would be the "authentic" work and if  the "authentic" work has any more value than the copies (in reprint or as her own work of art). I think Levine's work proofs  asking for the authentic print makes no sense, mainly because defining what "the authentic" is hard especially now in our digital world,  even more so if works are created with the intent of reproduction. 

figure 1: Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evens

figure 2: Michael Mandiberg, After Walker Evens, 

(to print and get a certificate of authenticity of 

Mandiberg works go to : www.AfterWalkerEvans.com/cert/2.pdf*

*afterwalkerevans.com is an art project by Mandiberg responding to Levin's work, the site "comment on how we come to know information in this burgeoning digital age:AfterWalkerEvans.com you download and print out the images along with a certificate of authenticity for each image, which you print out and sign yourself, as well as directions on how to frame the image so that it will fulfill the requirements of the certificate.  "the certificates here are used to insure that each satellite image be considered with equal authenticity, not the opposite. This is an explicit strategy to create a physical object with cultural value, but little or no economic value."