Pictures Generation refers to a group of artists associated with the 1970s and 1980s and framed by Douglas Crimp’s 1977 exhibition Pictures in New York.
A group of artists discussed from the 1977 exhibition 'Pictures' onward, quoting ready-made images from advertising, film, and television to critique authorship, originality, gender representation, and consumer culture.
The Pictures Generation showed that photography's relationship to originality, authorship, and authenticity was not natural but constructed — that quoting, appropriating, and re-photographing existing images could itself constitute artistic practice.
Pictures Generation refers to a group of artists associated with the 1970s and 1980s and framed by Douglas Crimp’s 1977 exhibition Pictures in New York.*1
On this site, photographers connected to Pictures Generation appear mainly in 1970–1980s, often overlapping with Conceptual Art and Feminist Photography.*2
Pictures Generation often overlaps with Conceptual Art and Feminist Photography. Reading those pages together makes it easier to see where method, institution, or critical language begins to diverge.*5
Barbara Kruger made the production of photographic meaning—through writing, typography, layout, and circulation—central to her art, drawing on her experience in magazine design …
Cindy Sherman transformed photography from a medium associated with evidence, likeness, and authorial self-expression into a way of testing how cinema, advertising, magazines …
Sherrie Levine is known for After Walker Evans and After Edward Weston, in which she rephotographed works by Walker Evans and Edward Weston from exhibition catalogs and …
Sources — museums, archives, and specialist literature (listed individually in § SRC on this page)
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