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In Perspective, Planet: Photograph sells for $4.3 Million
- Thread starter fahim mohammed
- Start date
Jerome Marot
Well-known member
Since the yahoo link does not work, here is a summary:
NEW YORK (AP) — A 1999 photograph of the Rhine river by German artist Andreas Gursky has sold for $4.3 million in New York City, setting a record for any photograph sold at auction.
Titled "Rhein II," the chromogenic color print face-mounted to acrylic glass, had a pre-sale estimate of $2.5 million to $3.5 million.
It sold Tuesday at Christie's. The buyer was not disclosed.
The previous record for any photography sold at auction was Cindy Sherman's "Untitled," which fetched $3.8 million at Christie's in May.
Gursky's panoramic image of the Rhine is one of an edition of six photographs. Four are in major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Modern in London.
And the picture:
(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rhein_II.jpg)
NEW YORK (AP) — A 1999 photograph of the Rhine river by German artist Andreas Gursky has sold for $4.3 million in New York City, setting a record for any photograph sold at auction.
Titled "Rhein II," the chromogenic color print face-mounted to acrylic glass, had a pre-sale estimate of $2.5 million to $3.5 million.
It sold Tuesday at Christie's. The buyer was not disclosed.
The previous record for any photography sold at auction was Cindy Sherman's "Untitled," which fetched $3.8 million at Christie's in May.
Gursky's panoramic image of the Rhine is one of an edition of six photographs. Four are in major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Modern in London.
And the picture:
(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rhein_II.jpg)
Mark Hampton
New member
Genius - beautiful from concept to execution
Tracy Lebenzon
New member
I don’t get a good sense of the image. Most of the nuance is probably lost due to the vast reduction of image size for the web reproduction.
What I find most interesting is that the work follows a trend of portraying essentially emptiness in an image – no bird or any other object as a focal point. Due to this the image becomes a portrayal of forms, patterns and mostly understated colors. The low color saturation is probably a good thing on a nearly 7’ x 12’ foot image. Too much color saturation would overwhelm the viewer.
I've haven’t heard of Gursky, but like the few panos of his I was able to find on the web. Truly an inspirational panographer, and a heck of a money maker too, evidently.
Thanks for the post!
What I find most interesting is that the work follows a trend of portraying essentially emptiness in an image – no bird or any other object as a focal point. Due to this the image becomes a portrayal of forms, patterns and mostly understated colors. The low color saturation is probably a good thing on a nearly 7’ x 12’ foot image. Too much color saturation would overwhelm the viewer.
I've haven’t heard of Gursky, but like the few panos of his I was able to find on the web. Truly an inspirational panographer, and a heck of a money maker too, evidently.
Thanks for the post!
Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Jerome Marot
Well-known member
I would believe that this trend is a consequence of the way these images are used: these images are designed to be hung in a museum. Go to you nearest museum of modern art, then to a museum of more ancient art and you will see why modern images are mostly empty.
Tracy Lebenzon
New member
Thanks. IIRC i read that in one of the brief articles on the image.
Tracy Lebenzon
New member
Thanks for the comment. I spent 5 years studying art history but didn’t spend any time on modern art. None of the profs at the U I attended taught it, so I don’t know much about the genre.
I did spend some time studying modern and post-modern philosophies and the growth of meaninglessness alla phenomology, structuralism, existentialism, etc., and all echo several flavors of emptiness and often persecution as topics of analysis and discourse.
Anywho, works such as this clearly have a charm to them, even if it is devoid of a typical so called hero or sign of redemption.
Does anyone know of one or more web sites where I can see more of Gursky’s works?
Cem_Usakligil
Well-known member
Hi Tracy,
Gursky is one of the main disciples of the so-called Dusseldorf School (of photography), originally spearheaded by the Bechers. There are countless websites which address the Dusseldorf school but one of my favorites is actually an article about the negative side of it: Has the Dusseldorf School killed photography? A couple of sites about Gursky are: this or this. For his images, Google is your friend.
Andrew Stannard
pro member
Whilst I can appreciate this image, I do think it makes you realise how much the price of art has to do with the Artist.
It would be fair to say that if Joe Bloggs had produced the same image it wouldn't have fetched quite the same price. Not that I'm saying there's anything wrong in that, but it does make you realise how important it is to build an appreciative audience of your work if you want to make a living from such things.
Andrew.
It would be fair to say that if Joe Bloggs had produced the same image it wouldn't have fetched quite the same price. Not that I'm saying there's anything wrong in that, but it does make you realise how important it is to build an appreciative audience of your work if you want to make a living from such things.
Andrew.
Ben Rubinstein
pro member
That is a very good article!
Denbigh Gabbitas
Member
I wonder what would have said that little boy who said "But the Emperor has no clothes !" ?
Cem_Usakligil
Well-known member
There is absolutely no shortage of people shouting out that the "emperor has no clothes" here. In fact this is the genaral reaction of most people who have heard about this news (which has been exploited to the max by news agengies). With the advent of Internet and the new media, we all have become the toughest critics. But does/should that matter? Can we create art by populism? Perhaps the Dutch artist Lucebert was right when he wrote "all things of value are defenseless".
Tracy Lebenzon
New member
Cem,
Thanks very much for the links! It provided for a very good introduction to the works and commentaries.
Mark Hampton
New member
I thought it was a joke, but there was no punch line...
big headline with no real payoff.... no links between pictorial image making and the original reaction “New Objectivity” in the 20/30 and then the rise again after the topographic to a new “New Objectivity” in germany ... just internet read like photographers complaining because they arent with the latest (or oldest) fad
the irony is in the title Objectivity... that in relation to the photography is very funny... one of the best joke to come out of germany for years !
.... to start to understand where the Gorsky image and most other artists are coming from an ok book is The Shock of the New: Art and the Century of Change it gives a limited but interesting start to what happened last C in relation to modern art (western / male)... and by no means comprehensive...
mutter mutter ...blah... more bloody.....words....image...blah..mutter...
ruleofthirds.....justgrass...smokeit....crapsky...goldentime....blah
sorry bit tangental
Jerome Marot
Well-known member
Except that Gursky photographs do not belong to the "new objectivity". The Bechers were indeed documenting "objectively". Their water towers, or other industrial constructions were photographed as they were.
Gursky used digital manipulation to delete objects from this image of the Rhine.
This is not an "objective" image. This is a representation of an idea, the idea of a tamed river used as a main way of communication and transport. It is not by chance that Gursky deleted everything but the street near the river.
The same principle is used in every of Gursky's photographs: by the sheer site of their prints, by the repetition of selected objects, by the exclusion of every context, Gursky presents an imaginary, idealized world. One which allows us to see the effect of our civilization on our surroundings: be it consumerism in "99 cents", a mad financial world in "Gruppe Deutsche Börse", the power of scientific machines in Kamioka Nucleon Decay Experiment, crazy roads in Bahrain, tourism gone out of hand in Rimini...
Don Ferguson Jr.
Well-known member
The value is based on who took it, Gursky
http://www.npr.org/blogs/picturesho.../meet-the-worlds-most-expensive-photo-part-ii
Maris Rusis
Member
The first part of the AP report posted by Jerome Marot already reveals some conceptual problems.
It is a nice question if Gursky's Rhein II is a photograph at all. Apparently it is (beyond argument) because a laser writer was used to map the contents of an electronic file onto light-sensitive photographic paper. So Rhein II is literally a photograph of that electronic file. Importantly, there is no place on earth near the River Rhine or elsewhere that corresponds to the content of Gursky's picture. The electronic file represents an exercise in synthesis merged with part sampling of image data. Frankly I'm not sure what purposes are fulfilled by looking at such maps of files. Is it a case of successful art being equated with the morally dubious achievement of successful deception? Or is it akin to the bargain between a conjourer and their audience. The audience knows it's being fooled but plays along anyway.
If, on the other hand, we stick to photographs as being pictures generated in light sensitive materials by light arriving from subject matter then questions of quasi-photographic identity don't even arise let alone need answering. And the reasons for looking at those photographs are plain and familiar, .
Mark Hampton
New member
I am glad you are no incharge of defining the meaning of words - we would be stuck in the 30s with the plain and familiar....
Cem_Usakligil
Well-known member
Hi Mark,
This issue of the strict definition of photography as used by Maris has been discussed at great length in the past. See here, here and my own reaction here. Suffice it to say, despite my great respect for the work of Maris and his very valuable contributions here, I totally disagree with his classical and very restrictive definition of what photography actually is. If left to Maris' definition, majority of us around here (basically anybody who uses a digital camera or digitizes film) would be called an "imager" instead of a photographer. I obviously disagree, fwiw.
Tracy Lebenzon
New member
Thanks for this reference. Unfortunately it isn't sold in the US. Can you you per chance recommend other okay or > books on the topic?
Bart_van_der_Wolf
pro member
Hi Tracy,
You can order from any Amazon.com website, it will be shipped to your home, across the world if need be, just fine.
Cheers,
Bart
Maris Rusis
Member
Cem it's not my definition. It comes from the man who invented the word photography and told us unambiguously what he mean by it. And so things remained for the next 150 years or so. Recently invented digital picture-making works quite differently to photography and I'm surprised that it is called by the same name. Perhaps the cause is the "language of the market-place" where things, cameras, software, printers, etc get called "photographic" to maximise sales to people who don't value the difference.
Photography is a narrow and technically constrained way of making pictures but it seems to have extraordinary (unwarranted?) prestige. People who have never made a picture out of light sensitive materials still crave the title photographer. Even Gursky, who could have placed an order for the manufacture of Rhein II in any medium (he has more than enough money), chose to have it brought forth as a photograph.
Truly Cem I don't think of you as a photographer but so what. In terms of picture making talent I would back you against Gursky every time.
Jerome Marot
Well-known member
Languages evolve. There are other words which meaning has changed in the last 150 years.
Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I accept this! Although I'd offer that what's going on is writing with electrons, since that what light does on all photosensitive surfaces. The light energy is absorbed by matter, kicking out an outer electron which them is somehow stored locally and the distribution of the electrons gets somehow translated to areas of brightness varying roughly with the intensity of the incident light.
In analog sensitive media, the ejected electron gets captured at first by some chemical and then that leads to a state which can be made to look different than material which has not received that electron. With film, it's easy to say that this is true photography. With silica based sensitive material, the discrete area of a pixel can only respond a little, more or a lot, but quite faithfully represent the number of electrons arriving into that small area. With film, however, the size of the writing area is much finer, down to the minutest beginning grain level. Unlike the sensel, a well sensitive to incident light and expressing radiation only proportionally with one value, "intensity", for that small area, film also records "character". The latter, a mechanical rigid cell cannot do. So, to be truthful, the drawing in a silicon sensor, if we except the word "Photography" for this substrate too, is really an array of single quality drawings with no other characteristics. Each can only be one uniform level of gray, all the way from deep black to the brightest white. There's no detail or nuance possible below that level of resolution. Moreover, the junctions between these compartments of a latent image are abrupt and therefore the gradualness of shading has to be simulated mathematically. If we'd accept just the gray dots of the individual cells of the silicon surface, then perhaps one could call this drawing, albeit, "punctate". So this would be "punctate photography". What still has to happen with digital imaging is that these compartments have to be "smudged" somehow to get a smooth picture and then edges have to be "discovered" and sharpened again. If we add color recovery, then that's even more estimating by the software. The fact image reconstruction is done so well is an proof of the brilliance of engineers, not of the nature of the process being "graphic".
Only analog imaging, classical photography involves recording a projected image in continuous form in a flat plane, with no interference in continuity, from one locus to another in the latent image. So it's quite fair to see that only this process is actually photography.
Still, one could argue that when we draw with a pencil, we have to use repeated strokes to build an image.
Wikipedia: 18th Century Artist using a camera obscura to outline his subject.
The camera obscura was appreciated since the time of Aristotle, who conceived from that the idea that light travels in straight lines. The portrait artist could use a projected image of a sitting subject and "graphed" the person using the projection on to paper as the guide. So the fact that today's silicon chips makes repeated grey dots of different intensities in it's method of "drawing" could be considered an extension of the multiple strokes and cross hatching needed with pencil drawings.
In Orthodox tradition, Jewish families can't have milk with meat, (perhaps an insult to the very purpose of milk), so, after a meat dinner, there's "Parev" ice cream, which contains no milk! When someone is offered "ice cream, no one denounces the obvious fraud. Everyone's happy and it's delicious!
We've arrived at that situation with film. The silver in the sewers is toxic for the environment. Darkroom fumes have been a source of health problems for more than a few photographers. So, the punctate silicon drawing substitute, gets to be called "Photography" too even though it cannot really make continuous tones without a lot of mathematics.
So Maris, you are absolutely right and Cem is also right by modern convention. But how can you both be right? Well that's right as well! They cannot, but we have to live with it.
One thing is for sure, without digital representation, film photography would be less known that it is!
Asher
Asher