Gordon Parks remake

Annie Leibovitz - 'Born In The USA'

The cover for Bruce Spingsteen's album Born In The USA, taken by Annie Leibovitz. The remake is presented here in two alternate versions. The question of which one is best is a decision I leave to everyone else...

Diane Arbus

The "Immediate Family" of Sally Mann (and MDH)

Candy Cigarette (1989)

And a few quotes:

“No matter how skillful the painter, his work was always in fee to an inescapable subjectivity. The fact that a human hand intervened cast a shadow of doubt over the image. Again, the essential factor in the transition from baroque to photography is not the perfecting of a physical process (photography will long remain the inferior of painting in the reproduction of color); rather does it lie in a psychological fact, to wit, in completely satisfying our appetite for illusion by a mechanical reproduction in the making of which man plays no part. The solution is not to be found in the result achieved but in the way of achieving it.”

André Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” (1945)

“One feature of the popular view of the sexual instinct is that it is absent in childhood and only awakens in the period of life described as puberty. This, however, is not merely a simple error but one that has had grave consequences, for it is mainly to this idea that we owe our present ignorance of the fundamental conditions of sexual life. A thorough study of the sexual manifestations of childhood would probably reveal the essential characters of the sexual instinct and would show us the course of its development and the way in which it is put together from various sources.”

Sigmund Freud, “Infantile Sexuality,” in Three Essays on Sexuality (1905)

Francesca Woodman

Originals on top. Both are untitled. I know next to nothing about the left image, though presumably it's one of Woodman's earlier works, taken at her childhood home in Boulder, Colorado, between 1972 and 1975. The right was taken in Antella, Italy, between '77 and '78, when she was studying in Rome. The first is almost certainly a self-portrait; I'm not sure about the second. I took mine at a friend's house north of campus.

William Eggleston/Dan-Makes (The Dan Pictures)

Eggleston Images/Dan-Makes

Plank Piece I

These photos by Charles Ray are from 1973, when he was studying sculpture as an undergraduate at the University of Iowa.

Here is a relatively close re-make shot of "Plank Piece I", photographed behind Hyvee.

Alec Soth_remix

Remix of "Paperback 2005" (Niagara series) by Alec Soth - basically just roaming through people's houses and searching for love paraphernalia (trashy but endearing). Quote from memory: I think these pictures are more related to a love song on the radio than to a well researched documentary about the feeling of love.

Snow White

This is a photoremake of Black Man With a Watermelon 1 while referencing the second picture above. In case you can't read the caption:
Looking into the mirror the black woman asked, "Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who's the finest of them all?" The Mirror says, "Snow White, you black bitch, and don't you forget it!!!"

Removed from Danger, Removed from Harm

Lori Nix is a photographer based in western NY. She grew up in Kansas and claims that as her inspiration for her project titled 'accidentally, kansas'. She wishes to remove the danger of disasters, to take the power away from it. I wanted to take the power away from it further. Wittgenstein would be proud.

A Nan Goldin Photo, as seen in Iran

Iranian Law dictates that women must be covered in public--this law extends to censorship of magazines, textbooks etc., that contain pictures of women that are not properly covered. Many of Nan Goldin's photos would find themselves with a healthy dose of black ink on them, if they were to be seen in public.

I have included the original photo and an example of Iranian censorship in popular magazines bought in Tehran.