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Maker(s):Levinson, Joel D.
Culture:American (born 1953)
Title:California Flea Market Series, Untitled #34
Date Made:1976
Type:Photograph
Materials:gelatin silver print
Measurements:Sheet: 11 in x 14 in; 27.9 cm x 35.6 cm; Image: 9 5/16 in x 12 3/8 in; 23.7 cm x 31.4 cm
Accession Number:  AC 2009.179
Credit Line:Gift of Linda and John Hillman (Class of 1966)
Museum Collection:  Mead Art Museum at Amherst College
2009_179.jpg

Label Text:
Levinson took Untitled #34 as part of a two-year project of photographing flea markets throughout California. Flea markets are almost always local affairs and essentially democratic. They perform a “taking-back” of commerce: agency lies with the individual, and the market operates outside of the mainstream of big businesses. This photograph demonstrates the potential role of language in this “taking-back.” By emphasizing the texts on recycled packaging, Levinson summarizes how commercial texts can be endowed with or divested of meaning.

In Untitled #34, the former commercial affiliation of a white van has been blacked out. A cardboard box-turned-dressing-room is printed with codes of mass production, which, for the average viewer and in this context, are meaningless. The makeshift dressing room has been hand-labeled and illustrated with a pair of winking eyes—it has been given new code, so to speak, which assumes the labeling role of the printed codes.

MD, PHOTOdocument exhibition, March 30, 2012-July 22, 2012

Tags:
figures; boxes; vehicles; women; bags; black and white; photography

Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+2009.179

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