These two sites refer to the line between traditional media and new media, as well as to the ability of new media to make the repetition and dissemination of the digital assembly line itself into a cultural gesture.

In 1936, Walker Evans photographed the Burroughs, a family of sharecroppers in Depression era Alabama. In 1979, Sherrie Levine rephotographed Walker Evans' photographs from the monograph First and Last. In 2001, Michael Mandiberg scanned these same photographs, returning them to the digital common on the Web sites AfterWalkerEvans.com and AfterSherrieLevine.com - virtual galleries designed to facilitate the dissemination of these images as part of a commentary on how we arrive at information in this burgeoning digital age.

On AfterSherrieLevine.com a browsable selection of these images is found, links to the high-resolution exhibition-quality images are available for download and print-out, along with a certificate of authenticity for each image / that can be printed out and signed by the user / and, finally, directions on how to frame the image so that it will fulfill the requirements of the certificate.

By making the image's URL its title - for example Untitled / AfterSherrieLevine.com/1.jpg / - the images can be easily located and downloaded by anyone. By distributing the images online with certificates of authenticity, the images can be owned by anyone. Unlike the work of many conceptual artists working today, these certificates are used to insure that each satellite image be considered equally authentic.

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

y.o.p. 2001
text by the artist

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