In the depths of the Great Depression, photographer Walker Evans chronicled the hardships facing everyday Americans, including his iconic "Alabama Tenant Farmer Wife" (1936). The photograph depicted Allie Mae Burrough, the wife of an Alabama sharecropper, then in her late twenties, and became a symbol of the nation's shared hardship. Nearly half a century later, photographer Sherrie Levine took a picture of a reproduction of Walker's original, creating "After Walker Evans: 4" (1981). Her "rephotograph" challenged the idea of authenticity and questioned the degree to which the photographer imprints on the photograph; as MoMA writes, in this rephotography, Levine and her contemporaries were "not only exposing and dissembling mass-media fictions, but enacting more complicated scenarios of desire, identification, and loss."

Approximately 27 years later, in 2008, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City put "After Walker Evans" on display, alongside a warning telling visitors not to photograph it. A security guard was posted nearby to ensure compliance. (As of 2021, MoMA had also disabled digital downloads of the image from their website.)

Well, the guard turned his back so I took a picture of it anyways. This 800x600 pixel print, captured in 2008, "After Sherrie Levine After Walker Evans" (2008), compresses the complex storyline behind the Evans/Levine masterpiece and makes it available to the world.