As soon as Kris showed the picture of the cowboy on a horse, we all recognized it as a Marberollo (I have no idea how to spell this!) advertisement and then were taken aback to see that a photographer had attached their name to it. How can one copy someone else’s work, claim it as their own, and expect it to be accepted as art? Sherry Levine used a similar method of operation in her work, but instead of a rephotographing a public advertisement, she rephotographed famous straight photographs. I commented in class that the rephotographer has no claim to authorship because the idea behind the photograph is not their own. I think Sherry Levine would agree. Her intention was more of an ontological critique than an artistic endeavor. Singerman emphasized that Sherry Levine’s photographs, “After Walker Evans,” was a postmodernist attempt at challenging prevailing ideas of authorship and the notion of original art. I applaud Levine for her brilliant (and extremely progressive) idea to make a critique of art using art.
Singerman’s analysis of Sherry Levine’s work expands on Crimp’s argument, which was based on Benjamin’s theories. Things are finally starting to come together! It seems that we are reaching a point where we have learned, read, and discussed enough photographic discourse to construct a general framework with which to approach complex articles like this one. Singerman brought up the idea of the presence of absence of a photograph. Crump argued that a photograph has a presence because what was once in front of the camera is now absent. The presence is different from the aura, as defined by Benjamin. Presence has nothing to do with authenticity but rather with the magic of seeing something which is not really there. Singerman says that Sherry Levine’s rephotographs also have a presence of absence--“they have existed not as the images present on the wall, but as an absence in those images, as evidence of a strategy, the result of a procedure, a process in the art world” (78). The presence of a rephotograph is derived from the absence of the original photo. The effect is similar, but slightly different than presence. Singerman says that after looking at Levine’s photos, “I was pulling myself up and out of Evans’ images and insisting instead on the frames, the mat, and the glass; that is, on the Levines” (80). The observer of a rephotograph is led away from the image until it becomes absent. The non-image part of the rephotograph fills in for the absence of the image, creating a unique sort of presence. Singerman’s argument implicitly supports Crimp’s argument. If photographs did not have a presence, the copy of the copy would be interchangeable and therefore, the re-photograph would not be received by the viewer with skepticism. Levine’s work suggests that although photography is a mechanically reproducible art, there is something auratic about a photograph.