Richard Prince: Early Photographs 1977-1979 is a rare publication of Prince's eponymous exhibition at Skarstedt Fine Art in early 2001. These early Prince photographs initiated his exploration of authorship and the original; ideas that were prevalent in the critical discourse of the late 70's, and perhaps even more so today. By manipulating the means and products of mass media, Prince gives his viewers a glimpse of American culture as directed towards middle-class consumers. His appropriations of living rooms, watches, and sophisticated couples and individuals turn the informative nature of the original advertisement into cultural indicators of a borrowed and fictional representation. As Kate Linker stated in Art Magazine, November 1982, "None of Richard Prince's images are unfamiliar; they are taken from the classic icons of product fetishism and satisfied desire…Prince selects them both for their typicality and for their strangeness or unreality--for their overloaded intensity…the super-real extravagance of their particulars, which are carefully naturalized as real."