ABSTRACT
In order to understand the conceptual cul-de-sac that contemporary art photography represents, it is important to trace the assumptions and claims that paralleled (and fueled) its trajectory and then to examine the merit and usefulness of these notions as they exist in the present. In addition to the work of Sherrie Levine with which this paper opened, the author would like briefly to consider the work of four other artists who may be seen as having a shared agenda, albeit with different inflections and emphases. The title of this paper winning the game when the rules have been changed relates to precisely this phenomenon. In the case of Richard Prince the dialectical, and hence, deconstructive readings effected by Levine’s tactics are arrived at by somewhat different means. In Ecstasy, three identical fashion photographs of a female model alone are alternated with two identical ones depicting a male and female model together.
