A Copy of a Copy of a Cpoy

In 1979 Sherrie Levine photographed the iconic photographs of families during the depression by Walker Evans and then hung her photographs of his photographs in a gallery show. In 2001 Michael Mandiberg scanned those images and made them available on the site AfterSherrieLevine to download; each download came with a certificate of authenticity which you could sign.


"This is an explicit strategy to create a physical object with cultural value, but little or no economic value. "


When does a photograph lose its value? And how do you protect your work, not just from reproduction but from someone taking your image and recreating it and calling it their own?

a copy of a copy

A certificate of Authenticity of a Copy of a Copy