Annie Liebovitz and the Art Market

[r.e.]

The weekend edition of the Financial Times has a lengthy, interesting essay called How Annie Got Shot".

If you subscribe to the FT, the link is http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/76af3c7a-d...44feabdc0.html

For non-subscribers, I suspect that the link won't work, but the current FT should be available on newsstands until Monday morning.

I was going to do a copy/paste here, which FT asks its subscribers not to do, but this site didn't like the length of the post. C'est la vie.

Cheers

[r.e.]

I should add that the essay goes well beyond Leibovitz's personal situation and discusses the relationship between photography and the art market generally. It is well worth reading.

[Richard K.]

Loads fine for me. Thanks for the link.

[D. Bryant]

The weekend edition of the Financial Times has a lengthy, interesting essay called How Annie Got Shot".

If you subscribe to the FT, the link is http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/76af3c7a-d...44feabdc0.html

For non-subscribers, I suspect that the link won't work, but the current FT should be available on newsstands until Monday morning.

I was going to do a copy/paste here, which FT asks its subscribers not to do, but this site didn't like the length of the post. C'est la vie.

Cheers

I just read the article with no problems, thanks for the link. I'm sure one can make some observations based on this article, but what would be the point, I think the article sums the whole issue up concerning Annie and the sale of her work.

The one thing in the article that I bristled over is the sale of the work by that thieving bastard Richard Prince. For the life of me I can't understand how such a no talented plagiarist can be regarded as a serious artist and fetch any amount of money for his work. But that underscores a bigger theme implied in the article and that is until an artist is anointed by the ruling class of art dealers and critics, no photographer can expect to receive their due financially (at least in the contemporary sense).

Leibovitz's other problem is that she is alive, and no amount of marketing can over come that. And so it goes on and on. I love some of her work but I'm undecided about how I think she should be regarded in the history of photography; she has received loads of recognition for her life maladies but how her work is regarded probably won't be sorted out until she and we are long gone.

Don Bryant

[John NYC]

To me, she is someone who bridges commercialism and art. If I may be so bold to predict... she will be remembered fondly and long because of her fabulous portraits of famous people, but her contribution to the artistic medium of photography?... well, really, what has she done that Irving Penn or others did not pioneer?

Rebuttals welcome. ;-)

[patrickjames]

She is a good photographer but she is no Avedon or Penn. Her photographs are usually celebrity fluff and she isn't exactly doing any groundbreaking work. I think that collectors see this lack of originality. She is unimportant to them. You can tell an Avedon print from a mile away. Not so with Liebowitz.

[Brian Ellis]

Interesting article, thanks for the link. If I was around 30 years old or younger and invested in art I'd buy all the work of Leibovitz's that I could afford, especially with prices in the hundreds or a thousand or so dollars as the article says. One of these days she'll die and her subjects will die. If a collector is patient and can outlive them he or she likely will make a lot of money from her work one of these days.

[Bill Burk]

I was moved by her photo of a highway patrol officer at the window of her car. I can't imagine having the guts to take a shot like that - all I can barely muster in the circumstances is a feeble - uh what seems to be the problem officer?

[Tori Nelson]

A very thoughtful article, thanks for posting the link here.

[Jim Jones]

Thanks, r.e., for the link. This will fuel the feud between photographs as art and photographs as valuable commodities. More than almost any other medium, photography's ease of replication provides the potential for it being the people's affordable art. It is unfortunate that a greedy few would deny so many so much pleasure in owning something inspiring or beautiful. That same greed has recently burdened so many American taxpayers with the necessity [?] of bailing out a few rich incompetents. Older photographers remember the rising cost of photographic emulsions because the Hunt brothers tried to monopolize the silver market. Even more conspicuous in its day was the tulip market crash of the 1600s in Holland. I hope nothing like that tarnishes the world of photography.