Week 6

Photography has maintained it's individuality as an art form because of the very nature of the medium.  What truly is an original when it comes to a medium that has developed and flourished in part due to its ability to be reproduced.  "That which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art."  In painting, it's much easier to distinguish the original from the copies, but in photography, in some ways they are all copies.  What does that mean then for the aura of the work?

Above I tried to recreate a bit about what Barthes says about aura.  Photographs are all copies, and should therefore hold their aura in the same way.  The aura of a painting diminishes when you get further and further from the original.  What happens however, in situations where in photography the prints are numbered?  If only 10 prints are part of an edition, do those have a stronger aura than any copies that would chance to come afterwards?  

I know appropriation art and especially Sherry Levine and Richard Prince have been brought up several times already in this class, but I still think of them when it comes to the idea of aura.

Last year when photographer Jim Krantz walked into the Guggenheim for a 30-year retrospective of Mr. Prince's work, he was struck by the image below.  This photograph- "Stretchin Out" was one that he had originally shot in the late 1990's for a Marlboro campaign.  Mr. Prince copied the image for his own work- but where then does that leave the aura?  Simply because Prince is protected by fair use under copyright laws- is he then able to steal an aura?  The age of mechanical reproduction allows for this image to have two auras- even though to the human eye- they may look exactly the same.  Also, it is a strange thought to think that this image probably has posters on sale in the museum bookshop for $9.99.  "Works of art are received and valued on different planes."  By emphasizing the exhibition value of a piece we are furthering its value as a reproducible work- something that I don't always find so positive.