Untitled (fashion)

A superlative example from Richard Prince's Untitled (fashion) series, this photograph is from a small body of work that was a breakthrough for the artist and his practice of appropriating popular imagery to expose a universal cultural convention. A sepia-toned architype of a gorgeous model, hair in perfect order with requisite pouty lips is shot from below at a three quarter angle. Prince's rephotographing of this work is not meant to be removed from the original gaze or to to be ironic. Rather, the artist's artistic intervention blends seamlessly with the original appropriated material, merging the meaning of it originally as an advertisement in the context of popular culture with the meaning of it as a work of high art. Prince's legacy of co-opting imagery and these early works in particular redefined photographic practices and undermined the very definitions of authorship in photography. Untitled (fashion) forces the viewer to catch one's self in the act of seduction.