"You were born in New Jersey. You've been there. You've never been there. You know it from movies. TV. Songs. Newspapers. You've Googled it. YouTubed it. Wikipediaed it. Flickred it. You've never even heard of it.

"So ask yourself: Is it possible to make a photograph of New Jersey regardless of where you are in the world?" This was the call for entries Laurel Ptak posted last winter on her photography blog, iheartphotograph.com.

Within the first week, more than 3,800 pageviews were clocked, with visitors from 58 countries and every continent except Antarctica. The result is an exhibition of over 1,000 images created by 189 artists from 18 countries using any and all kinds of digital media: shot with a digital camera, scanned, appropriated, photoshopped, screengrabbed, made with a cell phone camera. There were no restrictions as long as the image could be transmitted digitally.

Installation photos by Laurel Ptak

At the New York Photo Festival last weekend, Laurel said, "I decided to take an unconventional curatorial approach to this exhibition. I mean, this is a show generated from a global invitation for images to be submitted online, curated in iPhoto and printed using Shutterfly but to be exhibited in this small-town gallery that promotes the work of local artists." You could almost call this a kind of reverse engineering based on the idea of a localized representation of a globalized process that gets returned to its point of origin.

Laurel's decision to accept every single submission "came as a shock to most of the artists, who were more accustomed to being rejected by curators," she said. Then there was the problem of installing 1,000 images in a small gallery. "Five hundred of the prints were done as 5 x 7s and spaced apart on the walls of the main gallery with no captions, just numbered map pins keyed to a list of names. Artists literally had to hunt around the space for their work," she added. "This resulted in the most engaged art audience I've ever seen at an opening. The exhibition generated so much local buzz that it made page one of the Star Ledger of New Jersey, from which it was picked up by The Associated Press."

Is it Possible to Make a Photograph of New Jersey regardless of where you are in the world? is on view through Sunday May 25 at the Pierro Gallery in South Orange, New Jersey. On Thursday, May 22, 7:30 - 9:30, Laurel Ptak (Founder/curator of iheartphotograph.com and Educational Programs Manager for the Aperture Foundation). Wes Miller (Associate Curator, Art: 21), and Leigh Claire La Berge, Ph.d. (American Studies scholar and 2008 University of Chicago Society of Fellows) will take part in a panel discussion, The Google Aesthetic: Photography, Technology, and the Internet. A closing reception will follow. Please visit the website for information and directions.