Seealso: Adams, Ansel; Evans, Walker; Levy,
Ansel; Modernism; Moholy-Nagy, La ́szlo ́; Museum
of Modern Art; Porter, Eliot; Stieglitz, Alfred;
Strand, Paul; Weegee
Further Reading
Frank, Waldo, Lewis Mumford, Dorothy Norman, Paul
Rosenfeld, and Harold Rugg, eds.America & Alfred
Stieglitz: A Collective Portrait. New York: The Literary
Guild, 1934.
Greenough, Sarah.Modern Art and America: Alfred Stie-
glitz and His New York Galleries. Washington, DC:
National Gallery of Art, 2000.
Hoffman, Michael, and Martha Charoudi. ‘‘Spirit of An
American Place: An Exhibition of Photographs by
Alfred Stieglitz,’’Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin,
76 (1981) no. 331.
Newhall, Nancy.From Adams to Stieglitz: Pioneers of Mod-
ern Photography. New York: Aperture, 1989.
Norman, Dorothy.Alfred Stieglitz: An American Seer. New
York: Aperture, 1990.
Seligmann, Herbert J.Alfred Stieglitz Talking. New Haven:
Yale University Library, 1966.
Whelan, Richard.Alfred Stieglitz A Biography. New York:
Little, Brown and Company, 1995.APPROPRIATION
Appropriation became one of the most confounding
and provocative strategies used by artists during—
and since—the 1980s. The medium of photography
was integral to this method as the most effective tool
to enable artists to take possession of, borrow, steal,
or otherwise copy existing imagery, whether drawn
from the public domain, the works of other artists, or
the general cultural context.
Art historical precedents for the late twentieth
century strategy of appropriation included French
avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp’s decision
to exhibit ‘‘readymades’’ such as his signed urinal
entitledFountainbeginning in 1913, the Dadaist
collages and photomontages of Kurt Schwitters
and others, Robert Rauschenberg’s use of found
objects in his ‘‘combine’’ works of the late 1950s,
or the Pop Art and Fluxus movements of the
early 1960s, both of which frequently incorporated
commercial imagery. Certainly Andy Warhol’s
landmark photo silkscreens depicting multiple re-
presentations of Campbell’s Soup cans, Coca-Cola
bottles, and Hollywood personalities such as Ma-
rilyn Monroe became touchstones for later practi-
tioners of appropriation such as American sculptor
Jeff Koons.
Among the most notable artists to emerge in the
wake of appropriation were Jack Goldstein, Louise
Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, and Cindy
Sherman. Each of these artists used photographic
techniques that played off photography’s ability to
represent reality and to create multiple originals, and
expanded the definition of fine arts photography.
Goldstein (re-)presented brief film clips such as the
MGM lion’s roar shown on a continuous loop, and
Prince enlarged and thereby distorted imagery drawn
from magazine advertisements featuring the iconic
Marlboro cowboy. Levine critiqued the myth of the
great Modernist masterwork in her re-photographic
workssuchastheseriesAfter Walker Evans.Lawler,
who also collaborated early on with Levine, became
known for her photographs of works of art as they
are displayed in public institutions and private
homes. Sherman did not appropriate images as
such, but uncannily mimicked the general look of
1950s and 1960s Hollywood films in her disarmingly
straightforward 35-mm black-and-white series of
Untitled Film Stills.
Artists such as Levine found support in the writ-
ings of critics such as Douglas Crimp and Hal Foster.
Crimp, in his remarks as curator of the 1977 exhibi-
tionPictures, made the case that artists were now in
explicitly Postmodernist territory, having departed
from existing Modernist norms: ‘‘Those processes of
quotation, excerption, framing and staging that con-
stitute the strategies of the work I have been discuss-
ing necessitate uncovering strata of representation...
underneath each picture there is always another pic-
ture.’’ Meanwhile Foster in his analysis of appropria-AN AMERICAN PLACE