Highest price ever for work by a living photographer

**Charles Carstensen** · 4-Dec-2006, 09:50

It aint what you know, it is who you know.

**tim atherton** · 4-Dec-2006, 10:25

Originally Posted by Charles Carstensen

It aint what you know, it is who you know.

sure, never mind the 9 or 10 years of training at some of Germany's best photogrpahy and art schools, the years and expense spent working on bodies of work, building a solid history of exhibitions at smaller galleries etc etc.

**tim atherton** · 4-Dec-2006, 10:25

Originally Posted by Robert Skeoch

I could have shot that..... come on admit it you were thinking it also.
-Rob

yeah - but you didn't... :-)

**paulr** · 4-Dec-2006, 20:43

I just had a conversation that shed some light on the "photographer" vs. "artist who uses photography" conversation. It seems in a lot of cases to do more with the work than with the person doing it. If you start producing work that that has strong ties to traditions in other media, you might suddenly find yourself branded as an artist who uses photography ... even if your old work looks like fossils from the West Coast Landscape school.

My friend showed me a few contemporary examples of photographers who followed this path, and my small brain forgot their names right away. But the obvious example is Robert Frank. He made a name for himself with work coming out of a solidly photographic tradition (1950s street photography) and decades later started doing conceptual narrative pieces that combined photography and text. The photography world rejected his new work, but the larger art world eventually noticed, and loved it.

Frank followed that path for deeply personal reasons. I suspect others are doing it in pursuit of a bigger, richer, and (sometimes) more sophisticated audience. Viewed in the context of the art world at large, the photo world can look like a pretty small ghetto. Some artists are able to find more understanding and more acclaim outside of it.

**Jorge Gasteazoro** · 4-Dec-2006, 20:46

Originally Posted by Robert Skeoch

I could have shot that..... come on admit it you were thinking it also.
-Rob

Yeah, but would you have printed it 22 feet long? I have not seen the print in real life so I cant say if there is anything special about the colors, way it was printed etc, my suspicion is that the art cognisenti have spoken and conned at least one guy into buying big ass mediocre work for two mill, it seems the refrains, there is a fool born every minute and nobody got poor underestimating the taste of the american public seem to be true now more than ever.

OTOH, cudos for Gursky I am green with envy...

**paulr** · 4-Dec-2006, 21:14

You have to fool a lot of people (a lot of very rich fools) to drive a contemporary art auction into the millions.

**Dvenosa** · 5-Dec-2006, 03:37

This statement " I could have shot it" is not the major point. I've seen a lot of kids saying the same about some dada and surrealism painters. But this is not the point.

You have to be aware of the context that this was made, the life of the artist, the concept behind the work, the impact when you see it hanging on a museum wall... There are some good starting points to understand this, one of them is Martin Heidegger's "the origin of the work of art". Try to find a good translation because it is already complex, with a not so good translation it becomes unreadable.

I think there are some people around who really don't deserve all this status as artists, but Gursky is an amazing one...about his price...I think it's nuts...and I think he must think the same about it.

Daniel Venosa