"Seeing Sherrie Levine" - Maya

I was really confused by this essay, and by Sherrie Levin in general. I can see the merit in something like the artist who photographed Marlboro ad's and blew them up to have them be looked at as art, but Levin only directly photographed other people's photographs, did not do ANYTHING else to them, yet claimed them as her own. To me, that's basically the same as re-printing someone else's work, and claiming that because YOU printed them, they are yours. I suppose what makes her project unique and "art" is because of the controversy it caused. Stingerman confused me as well, because i was not exactly sure what he was trying to get at in his essay. He wanted to re-visit the photographs, because the first time he saw them, he was too focused on what he THOUGHT he was going to see to actually see what was really there. But if he wanted to REsee them, then he'd still them with a notion that he was going to see something different from the first time, which is still a pre-conceived idea, which would STILL make it impossible for him to purley "see" the pictures. I didn't understand what Stingerman was getting at with his ideas of the difference between "seeing" something as Evan's and seeing them differently if they were Levin's. Even if the "artist" is different it is still the same image, so i don't think it makes the image any different just because one photographer is a man and one is a woman. Personally, when i look at art, i don't even know, or really care to know, who the artist is, i just like to look at the piece. So i think i was very hard for me to relate to Stingerman, because he seemed to be VERY concerned with the backgrounds of the photographs.