The value of reproduction in American photography, 1969-1974 : authorship, ownership, and culpability
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The art historian Douglas Crimp wrote in 1984: "photography may have been invented in 1839, but it was only discovered in the 1970's." He refers to a story of photography's assimilation into art history: this dissertation shows how the 'discovery' of photography in 1970's America was not appropriation but literal remaking--old photographs were reproduced to make photography cohere as an autonomous art. Further, the technical details of this remaking were connected to literary, economic, and legal debates over the meaning of reproduction. These debates spawned theoretical models of reproduction that photographers drew upon to portray the technical details of their work to favorable effect, selectively highlighting aspects of the reprinting process to create new value for the resulting photographs. Centering the period around how reproduction changes the value of a photograph, I show how Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus, and Michael Lesy negotiated misperceptions and generalizations about photographic reproduction to position their respective work as intellectual property, unique but reproducible art, and convincing forensic evidence.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2022; ©2022 |
| Publication date | 2022; 2022 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Zhao, Yechen |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Nemerov, Alexander |
| Thesis advisor | Nemerov, Alexander |
| Thesis advisor | Kwon, Marci |
| Thesis advisor | Meyer, Richard, 1966- |
| Degree committee member | Kwon, Marci |
| Degree committee member | Meyer, Richard, 1966- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Art and Art History |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Yechen Zhao. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Art and Art History. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2022. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/xr422xf3059 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2022 by Yechen Zhao
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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