tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73573954271415831122024-03-13T16:11:46.035+01:00The Constant PhotographerChris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-21226658817271039202016-12-03T09:54:00.002+01:002016-12-03T09:54:39.415+01:00COLLECTING ICONS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif;">At the latest photo auction at "Westlicht" in Vienna one could find quite a lot of interresting photographs to collect (and actually for quite reasonable prices). Some of the photographs sold there are real "Icons", well know, often published pictures of famous events or made by (now) famous photographers. I highly recommend to bookmark the <a href="http://www.westlicht-auction.com/" target="_blank">Westlicht auction house</a>, they are hosting photo auctions and camera auctions twice a year and from the cataloges you can learn a lot about trends in collecting (e.g. it is quite interesting that some photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson didn't find a buyer).</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif;">Here are some "Icons" from the November 2016 auction:</span><br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FM18EPeeOac/WEKBGFzAfGI/AAAAAAAAGOQ/Pm7lrpBdw98WXSYLBS9EYA3APcsEZSKQACEw/s1600/rosenthal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FM18EPeeOac/WEKBGFzAfGI/AAAAAAAAGOQ/Pm7lrpBdw98WXSYLBS9EYA3APcsEZSKQACEw/s640/rosenthal.jpg" width="524" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px;"> J</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">OE ROSENTHAL (1911–2006) Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, 1945</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> Vintage silver print, printed in the 1950s. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666;"> 20,5 x 17,4 cm; </span></span><span style="color: #666666; letter-spacing: 0px;">Signed (the signature was added later) by the photographer in ink in the margin</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Hammer price (Incl. buyer's premium): </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">€ 24.000</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3aIOwZks9iM/WEKBwRTr4UI/AAAAAAAAGOs/vvUbrYExBCs36-Tca5Cxt643MZQZkQr0ACEw/s1600/chaldej.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="448" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3aIOwZks9iM/WEKBwRTr4UI/AAAAAAAAGOs/vvUbrYExBCs36-Tca5Cxt643MZQZkQr0ACEw/s640/chaldej.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>JEWGENI CHALDEJ (1917–1997) Soviet Flag over Reichstag, Berlin 1945</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666;">Gelatin silver prints, printed in the 1990s, </span></span><span style="color: #666666; letter-spacing: 0px;">20,5 x 29 cm</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Signed by the photographer in pencil on the reverse</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Hammer price (Incl. buyer's premium) </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">€ 1.920</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EopeZc4SgdA/WEKCYysTl3I/AAAAAAAAGO0/c4IU9ivPTxADQaatFYOIWFj1wBUUda1MQCEw/s1600/eisenstaedt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EopeZc4SgdA/WEKCYysTl3I/AAAAAAAAGO0/c4IU9ivPTxADQaatFYOIWFj1wBUUda1MQCEw/s640/eisenstaedt.jpg" width="463" /></a></div>
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<b style="color: #666666; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ALFRED EISENSTAEDT (1898–1995) ‘V-J Day Kiss in Times Square’, New York 1945</span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Gelatin silver print, printed in the 1970s, </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">31,8 x 22,8 cm</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Signed by the photographer in ink in the margin, his “PHOTO BY ALFRED EISENSTAEDT” stamp on the reverse. </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">PROVENANCE: Eisenstaedt Family Estate; the print was gifted by the photographer to a family friend, who later returned it to the family . </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Hammer price (Incl. buyer's premium) </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666;">€ 48.000</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zi1Ec4n9AD4/WEKCYheJlWI/AAAAAAAAGO0/RroX0-QzYdQdPCbie3izKUXCmwBHhYdeACEw/s1600/erwitt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="428" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zi1Ec4n9AD4/WEKCYheJlWI/AAAAAAAAGO0/RroX0-QzYdQdPCbie3izKUXCmwBHhYdeACEw/s640/erwitt.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ELLIOTT ERWITT (* 1928) ‘The Kitchen Debate’ (Nikita Khrushchev, Richard Nixon), Moscow July 24th, 1959</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Vintage silver print, </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">23,6 x 35,4 cm</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Hammer price (Incl. buyer's premium) </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">€ 6.000</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ieA5kfibqFo/WEKCZWmemOI/AAAAAAAAGO0/tBNIkU0SFFMqpwwNghpCIMi8KlHPWsPAACEw/s1600/stock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ieA5kfibqFo/WEKCZWmemOI/AAAAAAAAGO0/tBNIkU0SFFMqpwwNghpCIMi8KlHPWsPAACEw/s640/stock.jpg" width="430" /></a></div>
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<b style="letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">DENNIS STOCK (1928–2010) James Dean on Times Square, New York 1955</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Gelatin silver print, printed in the 1960s, </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">35 x 23,5 cm</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Photographer's agency stamp and handwritten neg. no. in ink and pencil on the reverse</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Hammer price (Incl. buyer's premium) </span><span style="color: #666666; letter-spacing: 0px;">€ 38.400</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1YBreyzO1f4/WEKDfHPZURI/AAAAAAAAGO4/fXg4t0NgBXUnKN2vyZPZa1UkgmYO6diXwCEw/s1600/capa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="414" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1YBreyzO1f4/WEKDfHPZURI/AAAAAAAAGO4/fXg4t0NgBXUnKN2vyZPZa1UkgmYO6diXwCEw/s640/capa.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ROBERT CAPA (1913–1954) Leon Trotsky lecturing, Copenhagen 1932</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Gelatin silver print, printed in 1964, </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">22,2 x 34 cm</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Photographer’s agency stamp, “IMAGES OF WAR - 1964” publication stamp and handwritten neg. no. in pencil on the reverse. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Hammer price (Incl. buyer's premium) </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">€ 2.280</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Capa's first ever publishe photograph...</span></span></div>
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-27225468220510874012016-01-29T09:28:00.000+01:002016-01-29T09:28:03.181+01:00A POTATO AS A PROXY FOR THE ONTOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.</i> </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: x-small;">[Albert Einstein]</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">What we have: A photograph of a potato, titled <i>Potato #345.</i> Made by "celebrity photographer" Kevin Abosch. In my opinion quite a bad photograph, technical and in a creative manner. This photograph was sold recently for $1.08 million. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Is a photograph of a potato worth a million dollars? That’s not for you or me to decide, ultimately. It’s for the buyer. But it is a prime example how crazy the art market can go from time to time (not to talk about collectors) - </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">the art market has been operating at borderline insanity levels, price-wise, for decades. Or, as one commentator stated: "<i>It's what happens when the inmates are in charge of the asylum".</i></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LwhG7lp5Xwo/VqshQ4tWZyI/AAAAAAAAFpY/ZJhVDwn5ZXM/s1600/abosch_potato.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LwhG7lp5Xwo/VqshQ4tWZyI/AAAAAAAAFpY/ZJhVDwn5ZXM/s400/abosch_potato.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The One-Million-Dollar-Potato</span></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Kevin Abosch is not the first photographer making pictures of vegetables. Actually every student of photography has to do such exercises in his first term at art college. Great photographers like Edward Weston made a lot of them (though not of potatoes). You can get one of his famous <i>Pepper #30</i> vintage prints for around $15,000 at the moment. But ok, it only took Weston 30 tries to get his famous photo. <i>Potato #345</i> is the result of an order of magnitude more effort. But just imagine the collection of really good photographs you could put together for $1.08 Million...</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r2saUef1x40/VqshsmOQOrI/AAAAAAAAFpg/dli8R3Hctac/s1600/weston_pepper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r2saUef1x40/VqshsmOQOrI/AAAAAAAAFpg/dli8R3Hctac/s400/weston_pepper.jpg" width="310" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pepper #30 by Edward Weston</span></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Maybe the buyer of <i>Potato #345 </i>was<i> </i>convinced by the profound philosophical thoughts of the „artist“: <i>"[...] potato as a proxy for the ontological study of the human experience. I see commonalities between humans and potatoes that speak to our relationship as individuals within a collective species ... Generally, the life of the harvested potato is violent and taken for granted." </i></span></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">If so that would at least proof that Einstein was right...</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l-tge4DaZCg/VqsiBXJyxgI/AAAAAAAAFpo/CO6IzWgxMFM/s1600/potatoes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="518" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l-tge4DaZCg/VqsiBXJyxgI/AAAAAAAAFpo/CO6IzWgxMFM/s640/potatoes.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Potatoes #1 by Chris deMatté</span></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The whole story is, for me as an artist, not very funny. Others found at least some comical aspects in this story: In a comment somebody noted: <i>"I'm just disappointed the potato photo wasn't an autochrome*. And just wondering: can one distill vodka from autochrome prints?"</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span style="color: #666666;">* Autochromes, an early color process developed by the Lumière brothers in France, were made using potato starch</span>.</i></span></div>
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-62234270920240036242016-01-14T11:21:00.002+01:002016-01-14T11:21:59.322+01:00SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE TIME<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8x4MGvkL4V4/Vpd0M3zaBVI/AAAAAAAAFnw/onDD6QHY5Sk/s1600/books2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8x4MGvkL4V4/Vpd0M3zaBVI/AAAAAAAAFnw/onDD6QHY5Sk/s1600/books2.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So you have found some old photo books on the attic or a bought one cheap at a flea market? Take a closer look and do some research. You may have hit a gold pot...</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">These days, photo books are seen as collector items in the art world, whether hardback or a zine, no book is completely overlooked by the market. Photo books are a special, unique way of curating a body of work and owning a physical object (not too distant from a physical print – which in many ways is superior to an image rendered on a computer screen).</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Think of a photo book as a concentrated mini portfolio or exhibition which is able to capture and convey a story, era, location and which can coin artistic trends in a single object. It can arguably be said that some photo books represent some photographers’ finest works. And collecting photo books can be a profitable endeavor too. Even if you just buy new books, you can build a valuable collection in a relatively short amount of time if you choose wisely — photography books don't take a hundred years to become rare and valuable. Some can become so in as little as five or ten years; in twenty or thirty years, most good photography monographs will have satisfied the definition of a collectable book: "worth more used than it sold for new."</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Some leads for starting a photo book collection:</span></span></div>
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<li><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Try to buy first editions and look for books that are signed.</span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It is crucial to look for the nicest possible copies. Books in inferior condition (unless exceedingly rare), don't hold value. </span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And if you buy books you genuinely like (I wouldn't counsel doing anything but!), it doesn't matter if they increase in value or not...</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There are some varying ways to look for collectibles. If you have a lot of money to spent you best start at the big auction houses. Most of them have photo book auctions twice a year or so. But don‘t forget that there is real money to spent. Lately a signed early edition of Henri Cartier-Bresson's The Decisive Moment sold for $19,800, a signed early edition of Robert Frank's influential photo book The Americans for $62,300. At the moment there are a few copies of this same book offered by rare book sellers in a price range of $12,750 to $75,000 (plus $10 for shipping). So if you want to collect photo books just for profit this might be your choice...</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A photo book worth up to $75,000...</span></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But there are other (more reasonable) ways to start a collection:</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Look for small edition</b> like the </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<i style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: left;">One Picture Books</i><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: left;"> by Nazraeli Publishing </span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FYdOwMriuxA/Vpdy2XETu6I/AAAAAAAAFnc/qLxRBNZ7tZA/s1600/onebookcompl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FYdOwMriuxA/Vpdy2XETu6I/AAAAAAAAFnc/qLxRBNZ7tZA/s320/onebookcompl.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Made in editions of five hundred, each book is sixteen pages, the last of which has an original signed and numbered print. Nazraeli publishes four One Picture books each spring and fall, keeping a thoughtful balance between established photographers and unpublished, lesser-known artists. Nazraeli uses a structured pricing system for the series. Upon release, each One Picture book is offered for forty dollars to subscribers; as the edition progresses, the price steadily increases, usually capping at a hundred and fifty dollars. Even so, One Picture books remain one of the most affordable ways to collect books and original prints of this caliber: after an edition sells out on the Nazraeli site, it can be often be found on bookseller and auction sites for upwards of $1,000.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A spread of Michael Kenna's <i>One Picture Book</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: left;">Until now they have published 92 volumes - if you had subscribed you would have paid $3,680. If you didn‘t subscribe you still can get the set of 92 books at some rare book galleries and seller - for the price of $9,950...</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The One Picture Book series will end at its 100th title in 2016, and will begin anew (in a slightly revised format) shortly thereafter. Maybe an opportunity for starting a collection?</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Buy <b>self-published books</b> from emerging photographers</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Self-publishing is a growing market. As it gets more and more easier (and cheaper) to produce a book in a limited edition the potential of self-publishing is widely used by photographers nowadays. And it offers a great opportunity to own unique examples of really good art...</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mWsTIRG7Uoo/Vpdy1qGpBOI/AAAAAAAAFnQ/_xN6s-5PDYc/s1600/Ruscha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mWsTIRG7Uoo/Vpdy1qGpBOI/AAAAAAAAFnQ/_xN6s-5PDYc/s320/Ruscha.jpg" width="259" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">One of earliest example of a self-published photo book is Edward Ruscha‘s Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations published by National Excelsior Press (Ruscha’s own imprint) in a run of 400 copies in 1963 originally sold for $3.50. Now the cheapest available copy on is $17,500...</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">In 2012 Cristina De Middel self-published her book „The Afronauts“ with a print-run of only 1000 copies and a a price of $50. That copies are now so sought after that they will exchange hands for $1,500...</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GtsrkoUvxvU/Vpdy1l1jQPI/AAAAAAAAFng/GcrQKlVsaak/s1600/Afronauts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GtsrkoUvxvU/Vpdy1l1jQPI/AAAAAAAAFng/GcrQKlVsaak/s640/Afronauts.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I highly recommend starting a photo book collection if the idea appeals to you. It can deepen your knowledge of, and your enjoyment of, photography; it can express your personal taste; and it can be fun. Even if you buy no more than a dozen well-chosen books a year, in a decade or two you will have gathered a respectable, and probably valuable, collection.</span></span></div>
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-63881419967140100572016-01-02T19:01:00.000+01:002016-01-02T19:01:41.447+01:00A MOTTO FOR 2016<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>"...there should be some discrimination and selection based on quality rather than novelty".</i></span></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CUd3NcY8b6s/VogP6f7K1jI/AAAAAAAAFiY/QYlzifDLUyk/s1600/MDKalenderberg03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CUd3NcY8b6s/VogP6f7K1jI/AAAAAAAAFiY/QYlzifDLUyk/s1600/MDKalenderberg03.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #999999; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Landscape, Untitled #3</span></td></tr>
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-37123984646676695102016-01-01T14:10:00.000+01:002016-01-18T08:14:07.767+01:00AN EXCLUSIVE OFFER<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Something special...</span><br />
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>(Fenway Park, Boston, MA, 2012)</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> One of my projects for 2016 is an exclusive offer for the readers of my blog(s). At first I was planning to do a "Print of the Month" offering but then I decided to offer you an exclusive portfolio instead. A portfolio with twelve fine art photographs, exclusively done for this portfolio in a very limited edition of twelve portfolios (plus three artist's copies). Every month throughout the year I will choose on of my photographs to be included into the portfolio - and it will be not a photograph done for one of my other projects but one solely made for this </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">portfolio. I don't yet know in which direction my work will drift but I can assure you that I will keep the highest standards (you can see some of my work at my <a href="http://chrisdematte.com/index.htm" target="_blank">website</a> and on my <a href="http://cdematte.blogspot.co.at/" target="_blank">photoblog</a>). And at the end collecting fine art photographs has a lot to do with trusting too...</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So this is my offer to you: </span><br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Hz9uGH4fdzA/VoZrMlU2glI/AAAAAAAAFhw/EIsDHV9ejoU/s1600/Logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Hz9uGH4fdzA/VoZrMlU2glI/AAAAAAAAFhw/EIsDHV9ejoU/s1600/Logo.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Limited Portfolio Edition </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">(in an edition of twelve plus three artist's copies) consisting of:</span><br />
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<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Twelve Fine Art Giclée Prints exclusively done for this portfolio</span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">picture </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">size (appr.) 21 x 27 cm, matted to 40 x 50 cm</span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">numbered, dated and signed in recto</span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Certificate of Authenticity in verso</span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">in a clamshell portfolio box, numbered and signed</span></li>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The portfolio will be finished in December 2016 and delivered end of 2016. The price for one portfolio is € 1,200,- (including shipping) with a downpayment when ordering of € 300,-.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If you want more informations about this project or want to purchase on of this exclusive artwork please contact me at </span><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">info[at]innerlightgallery.org</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A Happy New Year to all of you. Hope to hear from you soon ;-)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Chris DeMatté</span></div>
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-62278401122065908752015-12-26T10:07:00.001+01:002015-12-26T10:07:08.848+01:00MY (VIRTUAL) COLLECTION<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> Although I was never running after any trends and never cared about the so-called “mainstream“, in the more than thirty years, in which I was working as a photographer and artist, a lot of artists have affected my own work. Artists such as René Magritte, Salvador Dalí and M.C. Escher drew me early in the spheres of surrealism. Sigmund Freud also exerts) a not too small influence (after all, I'm from Vienna ;-)). And in the the photographic world and there where and are some artists who were more or less beacons on my own photographic way. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> Would I have the time (and the money) to have my own collection, these artists certainly an integral part of it. I want to present to you a "Top 10" </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">list of these artists, my own, subjective and virtual collection. Yes, it is predominantly so-called "classic". "Hip Artist" (such as Cindy Sherman and Andreas Gursky) you will not find here. And that has the simple reason that I can do very little with the vast majority of works of contemporary photography. But if you are interested in building your own collection, then the works by artists of my "Top 10" are certainly not only a good investment but (and especially) also works with a certain aesthetic and artistic standards. At least in my opinion...</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Ansel ADAMS</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> (1902-1984)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">No serious photographer (and collector) can ignore him. He influenced a whole generation of landscape photographers, he was prominently involved in giving photography her place in the art world. For some time his picture „Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico“ was the most expensive photograph. His books on the technical aspects of photography where, at least for my generation, more or less „the Bible“.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ansel Adams, <i>“Aspen, Northern New Mexico“</i>, 1958</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">W. Eugene SMITH</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> (1918-1978)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">An American photojournalist, renowned for the dedication he devoted to his projects and his uncompromising professional and ethical standards. Smith developed the photo essay into a sophisticated visual form and he was obsessed with photography. When he joined Magnum in 1955 he started a project to document the city of Pittsburgh. The project was supposed to take him three weeks, but spanned three years and encompassed tens of thousands of photographic negatives. It was too large to ever be shown...</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">W. Eugene Smith, <i>“Tomoko Vemura in Her Bath“</i>, 1971</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yousuf KARSH</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> (1908-2002)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he is "one of the greatest portrait photographers of the twentieth century, [who] achieved a distinct style in his theatrical lighting“. When I was at art college we always tried to copycat this distinct lighting when doing portraits. For sure you have seen many of his famous portraits (eg of Albert Einstein, Hemingway or Winston Churchill).</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yousuf Karsh, <i>“Humphrey Bogart“</i>, 1946</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Robert CAPA</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> (1913-1954)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The „founder“ of modern war photography, a (co-)founder of the Magnum Agency (the first cooperative agency for worldwide freelance photographers). Archetype of at least three generations of war photographers. Maybe not technical perfect or artistic but nonetheless somebody one can not ignore in the history of photography.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Robert Capa, </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>“</i></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Pablo Picasso and his wife Francoise Gillat“</i>, France, 1948</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Aleksander M. RODCHENKO</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> (1891-1956)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">One of the founders of constructivism. Rodchenko was one of the most versatile Constructivist artists to emerge after the Russian Revolution. He worked as a painter and graphic designer before turning to photomontage and photography. His photography was socially engaged, formally innovative, and opposed to a painterly aesthetic. Concerned with the need for analytical-documentary photo series, he often shot his subjects from odd angles - usually high above or down below - to shock the viewer and to postpone recognition.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alexander Rodchenko, <i>“In Russia“</i>, 1920s</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Robert MAPPLETHORPE</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> (1946-1989)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">known for his sometimes controversial large-scale, highly stylized black and white photography. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits and still-life images of flowers. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Robert Mapplethorpe,<i> “Ken Moody and Robert Sherman“</i>, 1984</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Herb RITTS (1952-2002)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">was an American photographer who concentrated on black-and-white photography and portraits, often in the style of classical Greek sculptures. Most famous for his fashion and celebrities pictures he too (like Mapplethorpe) formed the photographic style of the 1980s and 90s.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RaivO5l9KFg/Vn5THedq8RI/AAAAAAAAFgo/E0kwjUB9J8w/s1600/ritts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RaivO5l9KFg/Vn5THedq8RI/AAAAAAAAFgo/E0kwjUB9J8w/s640/ritts.jpg" width="470" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Herb Ritts, <i>"Dizzy Gillespie, Paris"</i>, 1989<br /></span></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Sebastião SALGADO (born 1944)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">is a Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist. He has traveled in over 120 countries for his photographic projects. Most of these have appeared in numerous press publications and books. Touring exhibitions of this work have been presented throughout the world. I still can remember the first time I saw his work. We where standing in front of it an where wandering how he could achieve the tonality in his pictures...</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sebastião Salgado, <i>“Churchgate Station, Bombay, India“</i>, 1995</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Jerry N. UELSMANN (born 1934)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">an American photographer and forerunner of photomontage. Uelsmann is a master printer, producing composite photographs with multiple negatives and extensive darkroom work. He uses up to a dozen enlargers at a time to produce his final dreamlike images.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jerry N. Uelsmann,<i> “Untitled“</i>, 1976</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Erik JOHANSSON</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> (born 1985)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">is a Swedish-born who creates surreal images by recombining photographs and other materials. He captures ideas by combining images in new ways to create what looks like a real photograph,</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: normal;"><sup> </sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">yet with logical inconsistencies to impart an effect of surrealism. Some finished images are the combination of hundreds of original photographs...</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Erik Johansson, <i>“Dreamwalking in between worlds</i>“, 2014</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #444444;">Michael KENNA</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666;"> (born 1953) </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">is an English photographer </span><span style="background-color: white;">best known for his black & white, unusual, landscapes with ethereal light achieved by photographing at dawn or at night with exposures of up to 10 hours. Most famous and enchanting are his pictures from Japan.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> As I said before, these are some artists, whose work I would collect myself if i would have time, space (and, of course, money). Laking this possibility on the walls there is hanging (besides some posters of photo exhibitions of some of the above mentioned) my own artwork. Maybe you want to have a look at it too. You can find some of it at my </span><a href="http://chrisdematte.com/index.htm" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;" target="_blank">>website</a><span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> and my </span><a href="http://cdematte.blogspot.co.at/" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;" target="_blank">>photoblog</a><span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">...</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5z6qgstvWO8/Vn5TF9r6rjI/AAAAAAAAFgE/9X_UQ-6cYms/s1600/fallsoffallch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="512" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5z6qgstvWO8/Vn5TF9r6rjI/AAAAAAAAFgE/9X_UQ-6cYms/s640/fallsoffallch.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Chris Dematté, <i>“Falls of Falloch“</i>, 1999 </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[from the “Avalon“ Portfolio]</span></span></div>
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-85679529914556115612015-12-23T13:03:00.000+01:002015-12-23T13:03:44.871+01:00Work in progress: PROJECT "FRONTLINE"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; text-align: justify;">A few weeks ago I started with my new project called "Frontline". The background of this project is the WW2 Battle of Moscow, which took place (according to official history) from Sept. 30, 1941 to April 2, 1942. Today it is seen as the largest battle between two armies of all time. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; text-align: justify;">The Battle of Moscow marked the first time Hitler's armies failed to triumph with their Blitzkrieg tactics and the German army never completly recovered from that defeat which is seen by many contemporary historians as the ultimate turning point of WW2.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Along the frontline of this battle there are today a lot of memorials and monuments remembering the heroic fight of the Red Army to stop the Fasiscts. With my project I want to document some of them. Seeing photography as a meaning of expression of one's feelings I am planing to "manipulate" my pictures in a way that they express the emotions I had while making the pictures. Here are first test to try out how to achieve this...</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">You can find more pictures at my <a href="http://cdematte.blogspot.co.at/2015/12/work-in-progress-project-frontline-few.html" target="_blank">photoblog</a>.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_YmpAzwIj24/VnqLJRM9iKI/AAAAAAAAFcQ/sJkbO0cNQl8/s1600/Sibirian01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="456" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_YmpAzwIj24/VnqLJRM9iKI/AAAAAAAAFcQ/sJkbO0cNQl8/s640/Sibirian01.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Monument to the "Defenders of Moscow's Sky"</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: left;"> , near Moshaisk</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The "Panfilov Warriors", Nelidovo</span></td></tr>
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-70044293562628300102015-12-22T12:13:00.001+01:002015-12-22T12:13:33.453+01:00HOW PHOTOGRAPHY LEARNED ABOUT DYING<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>The development of war photography in the interwar period on the example of Robert Capa's "Falling Soldier“</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">September 5, 1936</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> Spain, near the village Cerro Muriano on the Cordoba front: The 24-year-old Republican militiaman Federico Borrell García, making an assault on the fascist positions is hit by a bullet in the head and fatally wounded. The then 22-year-old photographer Robert Capa has captured this moment of dying and simultaneously had created his most famous photo - the "<i>Falling Soldier</i>".</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> Many superlatives have been striving for a description of this recording. Already at the first publication in the French magazine <i>Vu</i> on September 23, 1936, it was called the "<i>most exciting and immediate snapshot of the wa</i>r" that had ever succeeded. Russel Miller describes them as "<i>...the greatest photograph was ever taken</i>" and the German weekly magazine Stern as the "<i>...the image of the anti-war movement par excellence</i>". For Carol Squiers, a curator at the International Center of Photography in New York, it is "<i>the first compelling action shot taken during wartime</i>".</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> But how did it come that this (blurred and grainy, therefore from a technical standpoint, a bad one) picture of a dying one a (picture-)icon of the 20th century? And why did this picture with the Magnum Photo Agency’s archive number CAR 36004 W000X1 / ICP154 became the archetypal image of war photojournalism? This question I would like to pursue and demonstrate how Capas recording became a symbol of an "other death" after the horrors of the First World War and how it became the role model for the genre of war photography, which continues to work until today.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Early war photography or </span></b></span><b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">"</span></b><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The absence of dying"</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">The ocularly characteristic of all photographs from all wars before the First World War was the absence of dying or the dead.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The Crimean War (1853-56) is generally seen as the first photographically documented war. The shots that the photographer Roger Fenton made of this war are characterized not only by the absence of death, but also by the absence of war as such: they only are showing the bearing life of the soldiers and portraits of officers. In the Crimean War, the propaganda potential of the photographic coverage had not yet been identified, the technical effort for the creation of images was immense and the way the images from the theater of war "home" was a long and laborious. Moreover, the newspapers of that time did not have the technical capabilities to reprint pictures, so the pictures were exhibited with a large time lag in galleries.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This absence of the dead changed somehow in the photographic coverage on the American Civil War (1861-65). While still, due to the bulky photographic equipment, the fighting itself is not mapped, however fight scenes were simulated and the photographers entered the battlefield, at least after the skirmishes. And the first shots of the fallen were made, e.g at the battlefield of Gettysburg, where Timothy O’Sullivan's recorded the death in a picture with the designated title "<i>A Harvest of Death</i>". The photographer could move largely free and any censorship were subjected.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The First World War brought a fundamental change here. "Embedded" Photographers and cameramen were the rule, independent reporters the exception. Photography and film were discovered both as a means of propaganda (for influencing of public opinion) as well as a means of warfare (reconnaissance), have been fully placed in the service of military and was centrally controlled. For all participants there was war propaganda and censorship bodies, such as in Germany, the "<i>Bild- und Filmamt</i>" (image and movie office) or in Austria, the "<i>Kriegspressequartier</i>" (war press bureau) (KPQ). Bravery and heroism were emphasized. But the war took place, particular in populary publications like the Illustrated War Chronicle of "<i>Daheim</i>", practically without dying or death. So, for example, in the first four volumes of the Illustrated War Chronicle </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">"</span><i style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Daheim</i><span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">"</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> there where published a total of 1,457 photographs, of which 21 photos </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">showed wounded, 16 'heroes' graves, but only one photograph shows the body of a fallen German soldiers. The <i>"absence of dead</i>" was thus for the (propaganda) war photography during First World War the most striking feature - and was so diametrically to the experiences of the soldiers (and also of the civilians in the frontline areas). Because the First World War was the first "modern", "industrial" war and the use of newly developed weapons like large-caliber artillery, flamethrowers, submarines, poison gas and tanks called nearly ten million deaths and about 20 million wounded.</span></div>
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<b style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The wars of the "interwar period"</span></b></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The First World War was often called "<i>the war to end all war</i>s" in contemporary times. On the one hand this term was used in propaganda purposes, in order to strengthen the war effort, but mainly it was a reaction to the horrors of this war and the hope that such wars would no longer happen due to the horrendous number of victims and the costs. However, a glance at the history books shows a very different picture. The "end all wars was to" went smoothly into a series of civil wars, national and colonial wars. From the Russian Civil War (1917-20) to the Polish-Soviet War (1920-21), from the Greek-Turkish War (1921-23) to the civil wars in China (1930) and Austria (1934), from the so-called "Chaco War" between Bolivia and Paraguay (1932-35) to the Abyssinian campaign of Italy (1935), wars took place every single day through the twenties and thirties. At the end of this "<i>interwar period</i>" was the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 and the Sino-Japanese war, which began in 1937 and lasted until the end of World War II.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In 1919 the Western world thought that an "era of democracy" ushered in, but instead a political and ideological split in three ways took place: the democratic, the socialist-communist and fascist. And these three directions are also reflected in cultural history.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">History disintegrates into images, not into stories</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">"<i>History disintegrates into images, not into stories</i>" - this phrase from Walter Benjamin's "<i>Arcades Project</i>" can probably explain the principle of the cultural history of the 20th century, in particular for the so-called inter-war period from 1918 to 1939. This was influenced by the all-pervading process of "visualization" and by the contrast between the "desire to forget" the war with all the fears and traumas and of the awakening of Modernism. The use of new technologies brought the "mass" instead of the individual to the center, through the introduction of rotary printing newspapers and magazines became mass media, as well as radio and film, there is an audiovisual socialization of a broad sector of the population. The (visual) mass media would shape the image of the reality. As early as 1927 Siegfried Kraucauer complained, that through the mass distribution of photographs there was instead reality only „pictures of reality“.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In 1919 the horrors of war, the traumatic experiences, were still too close to represent them directly in the visual media. During the First World War - especially given the unimaginable death toll of the trenches on the Western Front -the American writer Henry James firmly noted:</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In all of this, the approach falls just as hard as the adherence to one's own thoughts using own words. The war has used up words; they have lost their power, they are spoiled. </span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">In place of the word images are now entering, or as the American journalist Walter Lippmann put it in 1922:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Today Photos possess for our imagination that authority which even approached the printed word and the spoken word before yesterday. They appear beyond measure real.</span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Photos of wars appeared since 1880 in daily and weekly magazines. But only in the interwar period came to a new form of mass media into being, weekly magazines in a high circulation. In France, <i>Vu</i> was first published in 1929, in the US <i>Life</i> (1936) and in the UK the <i>Picture Post</i> (1938), that brought also a radical change of the layout by reversing the weighting of pictures and texts. The technical development of photography favored this development: Through the invention of the 35mm camera ("Ur"-Leica 1914 by Oscar Barnak) and the 35mm film a tool was given to the photographers that allowed them to work fast, mobile and unobtrusive, and an until then unknown form of "participating war reporting" originated, they increasingly emancipated from the role of the documentary. The traditional view of the photograph on the war was replaced by the photograph of the war and with the help of these new technical possibilities a new visual language was created. The proximity to the events was henceforth the central criterion of authenticity. Robert Capa's photographic documentation of the Spanish Civil War was therefore merely the logical consequence of all these developments. He was "<i>just at the right time at the right place</i>".</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 was in many ways a novelty in the history of both the war and the war (picture) reporting. It was at the same time a civil war and an international conflict and war by proxy of the formative totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century. Depending on the political camp people where fighting in Spain for democracy or fascism, communism or anarchism in order to rescue the Christian West from the Bolshevik danger or to save the freedom endangered by the fascist barbarism. And the Spanish Civil War also marked photographically and in propaganda ways a new level. The Spanish Civil War, therefore, became the first real media war: It was the first war to be extensively and freely photographed for a mass audience, and marks the establishment of modern photography was as we know It. In the press photograph it brought the breakthrough of „investigative journalism", a mixture of humanitarian appeals, documentary realism and sensation operation. Unlike in the First World War, the contracting fronts tried from the beginning to give the war a certain image and to include the propagandist media in the dispute.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The Spanish Civil War brought also forth a new generation of war photographers. Photojournalist, adventurer and parvenus, who, equipped with the new fast cameras and a new self-image, operated at the same frontline like the soldiers and personally stood for originality, integrity and authenticity of a story. Probably the most famous among them (and that which should characterize the war photojournalism for generations until today) was Robert Capa.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Robert Capa was born Endre Erno Friedmann on 22 October 1913 in Budapest. He was the second of three sons of a Jewish tailor family. Having already participated early in the left spectrum, he, participated on a demonstration against the Hungarian dictator Horthy, was arrested, and had to choose to leave Hungary or to be put on trial, after which he emigrated to Germany. In Berlin, he began studying journalism at the University of Political Science and worked as Photolaborant the Ullstein publishing house and in 1932-1933 as a photo assistant at the <i>German Photo Service</i> (Dephot). 1932 his first photographs of Leon Trotsky at a speech in Copenhagen were published. After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, he fled first to Vienna and then on to Paris. In order to sell his pictures better, he invented a rich in Paris living American photographer named "Robert Capa". After an editor uncovered the fraud, Friedmann took the invented name itself. In the Spanish Civil War Robert Capa documented the struggle of the anti-fascist forces against the fascist Falange. In 1938 he went to China and reported on the Chinese resistance to the Japanese occupation. 1939 Capa moved to the USA where he in 1946 received the American citizenship. During World War II he photographed as a war correspondent, inter alia, in North Africa, Sicily and the D-Day, the Allied invasion in Normandy. In 1947, Capa, with Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour and George Rodger, founded the photo agency Magnum. He more and more tried to avoid war reporting. In 1948 he accompanied the creation of Israel with his camera and was an eyewitness of the outbreak of the War of Independence (and photographed again a war). In 1954 he returned to the war coverage, as Life urgently a photojournalist in Indochina needed…</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Capas picture of a mortally wounded militiaman became the most influential image of the Spanish Civil War (and at the same time also the most controversial) par excellence, it became an icon of war photography. It appears like an image of the romantic painting of the 19th century (it was sometimes compared with Francisco Goya's "<i>The Third of May, 1808</i>“) with its picture elements - the open sky, shoot from low angel, the sun illuminates the scene, the landscape in the background, falling militiaman with the rifle slipping from his hand at the moment - and leaves a lot of space for diverse ideas and interpretations. Mira Beham, for example, says it had served for aestheticism and glorification of the Spanish Civil War and had more poetic than factual value, because it was a heroic mood image, the nobility and dignity, for the Spanish people fighting. In this sense, the picture was, however, more likely to be used as a means of propaganda.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But an icon of the war photograph Capas "<i>Falling Soldier</i>" became for other reasons. First of all, it was "the first compelling action shot taken during wartime", in the middle of the battlefield, made in the moment of death, a quick, "clean" death, taken under risk for the life of the photographer himself. In addition, the image is a counterpoint to the war memories of the soldiers of the First World War, which were influenced by the anonymous mass death by gas, machine-gun fire and artillery bombardment lasting for days. Thus, it is an archetypal symbol of war death, which does not fit to the experiences of the wars of the 20th century: The death of the young militiaman is heroic and tragic, his death has a meaning, because he died not in vain, he dies for the cause in which he believes, for which he fought. His death is aesthetic, clean, fast and takes place in a natural environment, under the open sky. The inclusion implies that such a death has its own special beauty.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Robert Capa coined with his photographic style (and probably also with his bohemian life) all subsequent generations of war correspondents. One of his principles was: "If your picture is not good enough, then you're not close enough."</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He died on May 25, 1954 in Indochina when he stepped on a landmine. His last words were: "I'll go a little. Tell me if this continues.“ He died, as the American Society of Magazine Photographers noted in a posthumous appreciation, at work,"<i>in a tradition founded by him, for which there is no other word than his name</i></span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">"</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">. </span></div>
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<i style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">This article is a revised version of a seminar work done during my history studies at Vienna University in 2006</span></i></div>
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-52806787972277927352015-12-20T15:07:00.000+01:002015-12-20T15:07:17.205+01:00FROM SILVER TO SILICON<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>My personal journey through (parts of) the History of Photography.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">My personal (photographic) life is covering less than a quarter of the timespan of photography. Nevertheless I witnessed and took part in the most important transformations in it‘s history. This is a short and very personal journey through my photographic life...</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Sdy-xm0-ZEI/Vm6J52hj9HI/AAAAAAAAFZ4/U2vhXbZXhPo/s1600/ec05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="354" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Sdy-xm0-ZEI/Vm6J52hj9HI/AAAAAAAAFZ4/U2vhXbZXhPo/s640/ec05.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> When in 1984 I did my MFA in Photography at the “Graphische“ in Vienna (which was founded in 1888, therefore being one of the oldest schools for photography worldwide) photography was in a climax. The technical development had reached a level which couldn‘t be exceled. At least we thought so - not realizing that the Eastman Company, better know as Kodak, was already working on a 1-megapixel-CCD-sensor for digital cameras, an item which would at the end completely change our (photographic) life. And will bring down the Eastman Company because they themselves didn‘t fully believe in digital photography.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> At the beginning of the 1980s the curriculum of photo colleges still contained things like retouching negatives. We made portraits with the 4x5 inch view camera, using big tungsten light lamps for lightning. Being a student was also an financial matter. Films and paper was expensive, you always thought twice before making a print. Film speed was more or less limited to 27 DIN/400 ASA (anybody still knows ASA and DIN?). Everything above this was called push developing - and not very much appreciated by our teachers. We where mixing our own chemistry and spent whole days in the darkroom (which was especially nice in winter, when you didn‘t see any daylight during darkroom days). </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> We had our photographic “heroes“, Ansel Adams for those in landscape photography, Avedon for fashion, Mappelthorp and Herb Ritts where at the beginning of their careers, Oliviero Toscani started his. controversial and much discussed advertising campaign for Benetton. Although photography was not seen by many people as “art“ (there was only one photo gallery in Vienna at this time) many of us where thinking about photography as art. And it was the high time of photojournalism too. After all pictures changed the public opinion on the Vietnam war (which let to the „embedded“ journalists in the Iraq war of 1991). There where magazines like Life and National Geography, like GEO and Stern each of us wanted to work for. Being invited to become a member of MAGNUM was the Holy Grail...</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FYkmn_T0wLI/Vm6Inc61JvI/AAAAAAAAFY8/igRO2lvKgMM/s1600/passpar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="512" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FYkmn_T0wLI/Vm6Inc61JvI/AAAAAAAAFY8/igRO2lvKgMM/s640/passpar.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">From my "Avalon" Portfolio</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> At the beginning of my „career“ as an artist I did a lot of landscape photography which was quite a back braking undertaking. When I working on my „Avalon“ portfolio I was carrying about 25 kg of equipment for three weeks through the Highlands of Scotland. One needed at least a medium format camera (I for sure couldn‘t afford a 8x10 inch view camera at this time), a heavy tripod, a box full of filters (all shades of yellow to dark red, as Ansel Adams was teaching us). After that you spent hours, days, weeks in the darkroom, breathing in the healthy fumes, fighting with gradation, dotting and burning. And yes, I enjoyed this time. Very much so.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Just the basics. Add filters, heavy tripod, light meter...</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> Then some curious thing called „digital photography“ emerged. I was trying to ignore it, avoid it. But at some moment one of my clients wanted to have the pictures not only as slides or prints but also as digital files. I survived thanks to scanning the negatives and saving them on a Photo CD. But when they needed the pictures from a conference in Vienna within two hours after the event took place at their headquarter in Brussels, well, that was the point in time when I had to do the step into the world of digital photography.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Lanzarote. A "hyprid" so to say. Negative scanned, printed on inkjet printer...</span></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Was it worth? Well, it is photography too. I am not missing this endless hours in the darkroom. With digital photography you have at the end much more possibilities (or, at least, can achieve the results much easier and faster). Yes, it was worth it. Even if it is nowadays much more complicated to be recognised as a „real“ photographer. </span></span></div>
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<b style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Picts, or it doesn‘t happen</b><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Digital photography has „democratized“ photography (and more or less destroyed the professional photographers business). Everybody (who owns a cellphone) is making pictures today. Every day in 2014 an average of 1.8 billion photos were uploaded to the internet, a total of 657 billions. Every two minutes humans take more photos than ever existed in the total 150 years ago (and that are only this which are uploaded, pictures which a on some SD-cards or other hard disc are not included). </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The only problem I can see with this flood of pictures: The important ones, the really good ones, these which matter, are not so easy to find. And a lot of pictures are lost because its so easy to delete them. In the times before digital photography no (serious) photographer ever destroyed his negatives or slides. Nowadays you just push the right button to get rid of them if you think the are not worth keeping. In this connection I very much like the story of Dirk Halstead who did a photo which became a cover of Time magazine and won him many awards (not because of the quality but because of the uniqueness): During Bill Clinton‘s 1996 presidential campaign, Halstead was at an fundraiser event a few days before the election, shooting photos right up until the end. Several months after the fundraiser, the news broke that Clinton had had an affair with Monica Lewinsky. Searching his archive he came up with this particular photo which ended on the Time cover. He was shooting with a 35mm film SLR. His colleagues where shooting on digital - and deleted near identical images from their memory cards right after the event. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">My advice (maybe a little bit „old-school“): Never delete a picture. You never know if you might not need it some times in the future...</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">For me it was a long journey from the beginning of my photographic life until now. A journey which I enjoyed more often than not. A journey which is for sure not over yet...</span></span></div>
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-163477080762197592015-12-11T12:59:00.001+01:002015-12-11T13:02:13.621+01:00YES. IT IS ART.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j9sf857nSyU/Vmq4f5Ee8oI/AAAAAAAAFYo/fXNfBUj8XSw/s1600/NYC02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j9sf857nSyU/Vmq4f5Ee8oI/AAAAAAAAFYo/fXNfBUj8XSw/s1600/NYC02.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Documentary photography can be art photography too...</span></span></td></tr>
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<i style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Pictures which are going directly from the eyes to the heart...“</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(An inscription in the visitor‘s book of my 2015 „Leftovers“ exhibition in Lucca)</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></span><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">"</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>Is photography art?</i></span></span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">"</span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> may seem like a silly question to some (or many, or most) but it has been a debate which started more or less right at the moment when </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Joseph Nicéphore Niépce made the first photograph in 1826 or 1827 and this debate is still going on. If I would get 10 Euro every time I had this discussion over the last 30 years or so I would be a very rich man...</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> The invention of photography had an dramatic impact on the careers of illustrators and painters. The livelihood of many artists was jeopardized by the camera, which they often viewed as a mechanical device or passing fancy, rather than as an artist's tool. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Few denied that photography was an ingenious invention of the modern age but many saw it as a threat to the traditional values associated with art. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The public debate on whether images were photography as art or mere documentation began back then, often centering on the camera, rather than on the talents and intent of the photographer.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Let‘s start with a definition of </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">"</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Art Photography" - t</span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">hat is how Wikipedia is defining it: </span></div>
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<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Fine art photography is photography created in accordance with the vision of the artist as photographer.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: left;">Photography that is done as a fine art - that is, done to express the artist's perceptions and emotions and to share them with others.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: left;">The production of images to fulfill the creative vision of a photographer</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: left;">Creating images that evoke emotion by a photographic process in which one's mind and imagination are freely but competently exercised.</span></li>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> Photography is an art when the photographer is an artist. </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">It is immaterial that the photo can be replicated a thousand times (thus depriving the 'original' of its unique status). A photographer's art is his ability to capture a moment of reality and turn it into viewable image of interest and/or beauty. At the end of the day a camera is not so very different from a painter's brushes and paints. It is no more than a set of tools with which a photographer tries to create an image: an image to stir our soul, in the way that images do.</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://chrisdematte.com/about.htm" target="_blank">An Artist's Statement</a>:</span></span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Every time I take pictures, I don't photograph a motive, but the picture of a motive. To transform this motive into a picture, one must convert it into the "medium photography", meaning that everything you observed at the motive, experienced, felt you have to express with the given characteristics of the medium - the whole pallet of the grey tones . The more exactly one knows the tools, the more successfully the conversion is. The successful picture - and not the motive itself - then represents the photographic correspondence, the photographic equivalent of the experiences with this motive. In this doing the artistic photography arranges itself into a row with all other representing arts.</span></span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Only the picture contains the message.</span></i></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> One could say that when the one of the leading institutions in modern art, the MoMA in New York, has a separate department for photography (as it has since 1940) the question „Is photography art?“ could be seen as solved. </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Today, fine art photographs can be seen in many leading museums around the world, even such revered and conservative like the Albertina in Vienna...</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>"I have discovered photography. Now I can kill myself. I have nothing else to learn."</i> </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Pablo Picasso</span></span></div>
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<i style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: right;">"</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>I have always been very interested in photography. I have looked at far more photographs </i></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>than I have paintings. Because their reality is stronger than reality itself.</i></span></span><i style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: right;">"</i></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Francis Bacon</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Posted in: Oppinions</i></span></span></div>
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-5518917752270987992015-12-10T10:30:00.000+01:002015-12-10T10:30:28.582+01:00TAKING CARE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KtTe8sQJlqg/VmlAbS7XucI/AAAAAAAAFUs/sZkBmKq7c3s/s1600/Bagni.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KtTe8sQJlqg/VmlAbS7XucI/AAAAAAAAFUs/sZkBmKq7c3s/s1600/Bagni.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A great place for exhebitions. A nightmare for storage matters..</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> This summer I had an exhibition with parts of my „Leftovers. Utopia revisited“ Portfolio at the La Rondine Gallery in Bagin di Lucca, Tuscany. Located in an old building it was an amazing location. But for showing photographs it had one big drawback: Built directly into a mountain slope the humidity was really high. Shona Nunan and Michael Cartwright, the artists who own the gallery, are doing mostly amazing marble sculpture, so for them high humidity is not so much of concern. For a short time it worked perfect (with the help of an dehumidifier running all the time). As a place for storage of photographical materials it would be the worst place you can imagine...</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> In today‘s article I want to explain a little bit how to protect your collection and to keep it </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">pristine in order to preserve its value. The number of factors that can lead to degradation is quite high. They are, in no particular order: poor housing, poor framing, poor storage, and the effects of temperature, humidity and pollution.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> The main physical enemies of photographs are direct sunlight and high humidity. But there also are more hidden ones: adhesives that degrade over time or vapours that can be given off by wood, environmental pollution can be problem too.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>The Environment</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Keep your fine art photographs away from intense heat and direct sunlight (</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">or unfiltered fluorescent lights)</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">. Try to avoid extreme changes in the atmosphere. The warmer the temperature the faster the picture will fade. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> - The ideal temperature for storage is between 18°C and 20°C.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Humidity is another big concern. Paper, gelatin, dyes are natural products and very prone.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> - The ideal condition of relative humidity is between 30-40%.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> - Pollutants, such as cooking oils, particles from smoking and insect particles, are all causes of damage. Don‘t use plywood furniture for storage as it can evaporate solvents.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: #444444;">The Storage</span><span style="color: #666666;"> </span></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> - Store in a flat position.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If you choose to store fine art photography in a shelving unit or box, be sure that the works are in a flat position. Use acid free paper to separate the works or put </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">each one in a separate polyethylene or polyester bag (Mylar is the best).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444;"> - Always use archival materials.</span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">All used materials should be P.A.T.-approved. (The Photographic Activity Test, or PAT, is an international standard test (ISO18916) for evaluating photo-storage and display products.).</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-U8cXoIKSt_s/VmlBVJT-5gI/AAAAAAAAFU0/m-vXR8VI4po/s1600/storage.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-U8cXoIKSt_s/VmlBVJT-5gI/AAAAAAAAFU0/m-vXR8VI4po/s1600/storage.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">P.A.T.-apporved storage boxes and a metal cabinet<span style="background-color: white;"> <span style="text-align: left;">for storing large formats</span></span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> - Check on the condition of your artworks regularly to see if any damage has occurred.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> - Never try to clean or restore damaged photographs by yourself. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">If you will follow this basic rules you will rejoice in your fine art photographs for a long time. And the will keep their value.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>More to come...</i></span></span></div>
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-10174467744239122132015-12-09T10:48:00.001+01:002015-12-09T11:03:39.387+01:00WHAT TO LOOK FOR...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Art Photography must not be boring...</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> Photographs have been collected since its innovation. As early as the 1850s photographs were sold by art galleries. In 1854 the first auction of photographs took place in London (although the first auction in the USA was only a century later). By the early 20</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0px;">th</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> century photography was established as collectible (but the debate about „photography as art“ is still going on even today) and from the 1970</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0px;">th</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> on we can find the market as we know it today.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> Seeing an investment potential can be a reason for collecting photographs but an increase in value is never guaranteed and is very much depending on what is called „art market“, which is following more or less the up and downs of the economy, reflecting every crisis (reflected e.g. in the downfall of auction prices in the 1990s or 2008).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> In my opinion aesthetic considerations are far more important. As already said before: Collect what you love. For a beginning concentrate on one specific theme, period, style or artist. Later on your collecting decisions may evolve and change when your knowledge increases. And with everything in life it very much depends on how much money you want (or can) spend...</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> First of all I would suggest some reading. There are a lot of books about the „theory of photography“ (also imho most of them are more confusing than helpful). There are some „musts“ you should read: </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Susan Sontag</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">‘s <i>On Photography</i>, <i>Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography</i> by </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Roland Barthes</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> or </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Walter Benjamin</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">‘s <i>On Photography</i> and <i>The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction</i>. All these book my help you to get some background on the philosophical base of photography...</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "\22 trebuchet ms\22 " , sans-serif;">WHAT TO LOOK FOR WHEN COLLECTING PHOTOGRAPHS</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>[This of course is not a complete list. There are quite a number of other aspects that have to be taken into account (such as storage, presentation, etc), with which I will deal in another post.]</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">So you found a photography you like. Or you have heard about an „upcoming“ photographer who‘s work you like. Try to learn as much as possible about her/him. Many (established) photographers have written books about their work. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Some examples of book by or about photographers. I personally can recommend each of it...</span></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> T</span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">ry to learn how they are thinking, what they have to tell you about their work, the ideas behind it. Look at their bios: do they exhibit regularly, is their work critically acclaimed? What is their place in the present market, the history of photography (although this are points to take into consideration when you are collecting as an investment only).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">• Image</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Most important thing: Do you love it? Or as the collector Arnold Crane stated: „I look for nothing [in a photograph]. It looks for me! It hits me first in the gut and then in the eye!“</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">•</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Condition</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">All photographic materials are affected by physical, chemical and biological deteriorations. Photograph stability refers the ability of prints to remain visibly unchanged over periods of time. Different photographic processes yield varying degrees of stability. Most contemporary photographs are expected to be in a pristine condition. 19th century prints are often faded. Generally speaking on can say that, under optimal conditions, the durability of a (classic) barite paper is about 100 years, of PE (polyethylene) papers about 30 years and color papers between 15 years and 30 years. A contemporary ink jet print could last, depending on the used paper and ink, between 60 to more than 200 years. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The condition of a print has a big influence on the price. Ansel Adams famous picture Moonrise, Hernandez can vary between $0.00 and $600,000, depending on the condition. The latter price was achieved at auction for a 1948 vintage print with a clear and documented provenance in excellent condition. The current price for a late print in very good to excellent condition is $50-60,000. And the Ansel Adams Gallery reports about a print of Moonrise that looked like it had been a pinup in a machine shop, with heavy oil stains on the mount, smudges and scratches on the surface, that basically had zero value on the market.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">•</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Signature</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">In the 19th and 20th centuries, signing a photograph was the exception rather than the rule. More people were making photographs than buying them. it wasn‘t until the latter part of the 20th century, when the market for photography became a reality, that the practice of signing became more common.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">•</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Existing prints, editions</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Rarity can be an important factor for evaluation. Most contemporary artists are producing limited editions but prior to the 1980s most photographers did not limit their prints. Be also aware of how each image is limited. Sally Mann, for example, is doing her limited editions as 25 prints in the format of 20x24 inch, 25 prints in the format of 8x10 inch while reserving the right to produce yet another 25 in 16x20 inch, so you can never know haw many prints exist (without checking with the artist or her dealers).</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">This are only a few points that a novice collector should take into consideration. I will deal with some more in upcoming posts. So stay tuned. ;-)</span></span></div>
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-45313625424060402122015-12-08T10:02:00.001+01:002015-12-08T10:02:52.814+01:00THE SHALLOWS OF THE CONTEMPORARY ART WORLD <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Last Friday a strange think happened at Art Basel Miami Beach:</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Two women - visitors of the art show, not exhibitors - got into a fight and one stabbed the other with a knife (the injuries are not life-threatening, as the Miami Beach Police later confirmed)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Some patrons thought the stabbing and the blood-covered woman was an art performance art. Others believed the police tape cordoning off an area of the convention center was part of an art installation...</b></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Crazy because of art? </span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">[Read the <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/visual-arts/art-basel/article48069515.html" target="_blank">Miami Herald Articel here</a>]</span><br />
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-12822349675393940492015-12-07T13:41:00.000+01:002015-12-08T10:14:01.650+01:00BUY WHAT YOU LOVE...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Photo Festivals like Les Recontres d'Arles with their exhibitions and portfolio reviews ( (seen here) are a good opportunity to get a perspective on what's going on in the Univers of Art Photography</span></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 14px;"> C</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">ollecting photographs is much about personal taste. If you see collecting photographs only as an investment possibility then maybe I am not the right person to give you advices. I know up to nothing about</span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">investments. And personally I don‘t like most of the „most expansive photographs“, don‘t see any artistic values in them. But thats my personal opinion, is reflecting my personal taste. If you want to make investments to increase your money I can give you only a short view on the market and keep in mind: While many photographs can be fine investments, an increase in value is never guaranteed.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">In the global art market the medium of photography represents</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">only a tiny fragment of about 2%. In 2014 all photographs sold at auctions brought in about $180 million (just to compare: the 2014 auction at Christie‘s</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">of Picasso‘s Les Femmes d‘Alger achieved with $179.5 the same sum).</span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> Arthur Goldberg, a major US collector of contemporary photography for the last 40 years, said that it is up to history to decide if there should be equality. However, he thinks that buying photography is a real opportunity to own great art at a lower price. “Great art is great art,” he said, “whatever the medium.”</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #444444;">"To collect photographs is to collect the world."</span><span style="color: #666666;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><i>[Susan SAuctionsontag]</i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> Whether you’re buying for profit, pleasure, or both - there is no right or wrong way to collect. There are only some things you have to keep in mind to avoid spending money more than necessary.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> Whatever your approach to collecting, the crucial thing is to enjoy it. “Buy what you love. Buy what speaks to you,” says Laura Noble, gallerist and author of the „Art of Collecting Photography“. “It’s a reflection of who you are.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">First and foremost, a collection should reflect your taste and interest (and budget). </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: justify;"> So make the first step. Decide what you want to collect. You can collect by genre (e.g. travel photographs from the 19th century) or on artist you like. You can collect prints done with a special technique (like platinum prints). You can collect prints made in a certain timeframe (e.g. the 1950s). It‘s only about you. Go out and find what you like. It is waiting there to be discovered.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Some considerations to take into account...</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> Whatever you decided to collect, there are a number of criteria to follow (which are often the same ones for establishing the value appraisals). </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> There are many different circumstantialities one has to take into consideration to find the right value for a certain print. I want to show you this fact on one striking example:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Edward Henry Weston was a 20th-century American photographer He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers…" and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">One of his most famous series is the „Shells“ portfolio. But prints from this portfolio are in a range from about $ 15.000 up to more than $1 million (for the same image!). Why?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Well, it very much depends on the kind of the print. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Weston‘s photographs come in four varieties: vintage prints, signed by himself and prints late by himself (e.g. in the 1930s from his 1920s negatives or in the 1940s from his 1930s negatives). Then there are so called „project prints“ made under his supervision by his son Brett in the 1950s (when Edward developed Parkinson‘s disease). And there are posthumous prints by his other son Cole...</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 1px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>Left:</i> April 2012 Christie‘s</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 1px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">EDWARD WESTON (1886-1958) </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 1px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">SHELL</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 1px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">gelatin silver print, printed 1970s by Cole Weston </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 1px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">signed, titled, dated by Cole Weston in pencil and credit stamp </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 1px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">(on the reverse of the mount)</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 1px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">image/sheet: 9 3/8 x 7 3/8 in. (24.3 x 19.2 cm.) </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 1px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">mount: 15 x 13¼in. (38.5 x 34 cm.) </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Estimated: $6,000 - $8,000</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 1px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Lot Sold: $18,750</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>Middle:</i> April 2014, Sotheby‘s</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Edward Weston</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">'SHELLS'</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">mounted to buff-colored card, signed, dated, initialed, and editioned '18/50' in pencil </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">on the mount, titled and dated in pencil on the reverse, framed, 1927</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">9 1/4 by 7 in. (23.5 x 17.8 cm.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Estimated: $</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">300,000 - $500,000</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 1px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Lot Sold: $905.000</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>Right:</i> April 2010, Sotheby‘s</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Edward Weston</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">NAUTILUS</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Estimated: $</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">300,000 - $500,000</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Lot Sold: $1,082,500</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">As I said before: </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "\22 trebuchet ms\22 " , sans-serif;"> A collection should reflect your taste and interest. And it will be very much influenced by your budget...</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>More to come soon...</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-shadow: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px #ffffff;"><i style="color: #666666; font-family: '"trebuchet ms"', sans-serif;">Filed under [<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7357395427141583112#editor/target=page;pageID=3570942066528224085;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=3;src=pagename">Collector's Basics</a>]</i></span></div>
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-909901681464021322015-12-05T13:41:00.001+01:002015-12-05T13:50:55.517+01:00MORE MONEY THAN SENSE? <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> A year ago, the art world was startled by the following message:</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Peter Lik Print Sells for $6.5 Million, Shattering Record for Most Expensive Photo</span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>Australian landscape photographer Peter Lik has taken the crown for most expensive photo ever sold. “Phantom,” the picture shown above, was sold to a private collector for a staggering $6.5 million. The record was previously held by Andreas Gursky’s “Rhein II”, which sold for $4.3 million back in 2011.</i>[</span><a href="http://petapixel.com/2014/12/10/peter-lik-print-sells-6-5-million-shattering-record-expensive-photo/" style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;" target="_blank">http://petapixel.com</a><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">]</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">But soon there emerged a lot of doubts about this deal. As with his 2010 piece, "One", the purported sale was to a private collector, and therefore there was no way to verify the claim. Rumors have swirled for years that Lik’s investors "buy" his works at absurd prices as a marketing stunt to generate interest in his work. And soon the whole "business model" of Peter Lik has been questioned. Renowned media such as the <i>New York Times</i> or <i>The Guardian</i> dealt extensively with Peter Lik. "<a href="https://news.artnet.com/market/is-that-65-million-photo-sale-for-real-probably-not-196563" target="_blank">Is that $6.5 Million Photo Sale for Real? Probably Not!</a>" an article on <i>artnet news</i> is titled. "<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/buyer-beware-treat-peter-lik-photo-sale-with-scepticism-20141212-125khz.html" target="_blank">Buyer beware: Treat Peter Lik photo sale with skepticism</a>", "<a href="http://www.artmarketmonitor.com/2014/12/12/those-10m-photos-may-not-be-art-and-now-there-are-doubts-about-the-truth-of-the-sales/" target="_blank">Those $10m Photos May Not Be Art—and Now There Are Doubts About the Truth of the Sales</a>", "<a href="http://petapixel.com/2014/12/10/expensive-photo-world-best-marketing-stunt/" target="_blank">The Most Expensive Photo in the World, or the Best Marketing Stunt?</a>" where other headlines.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">There was also a significant backlash to this news on Twitter, where @LarryWasser called it "</span><i><span style="color: #444444;">the sad story of uneducated buyers</span></i><span style="color: #666666;">" and @polarapfel saw Lik's business as a guide to "</span><i><span style="color: #444444;">how to run a successful scam on novice art buyers</span></i><span style="color: #666666;">." On Facebook, Ken Micallef called Lik's practices "</span><i><span style="color: #444444;">sickening and hilarious</span></i></span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">"</span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444;">.</span></i></div>
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<span style="clear: left; color: #666666; float: left; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kmJLl4XOPS0/VmLVMcrnakI/AAAAAAAAFTA/Q8daulO-6IM/s1600/Lik.png" /></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">If you consider that, according to the <i>artnet Price Database</i> Lik‘s work has only topped the $3,000 mark (on the secondary market) once for a 2008 sale of a color version of "Phantom" (named "Ghost" then which is, as you can see above,</span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">the same picture, just converted to b&w, also nothing is known about the size</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">), which sold for $15,860, these doubts are more than justified. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">So what is Peter Lik‘s "Business model" then?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">His editions are in lots of 995—950 „limited editions“ and 45 artist’s proofs. Each print is identical but the proofs have a bit more prestige to them so they start at $10,000. His business model is that as a print is selling, the price will increase. Once he has sold 10 percent of a limited edition, the price increases. So, an image that would cost $4000 if you bought the first one, could reach as high as $200,000 when it’s down to the last few.</span></span></div>
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<i style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: justify;">(Note: Most photographers offer their work in very limited editions. A large format print is often limited to ten or less. And they all sell for the same amount.)</i></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">For the record-setting Phantom, Lik employed a new tactic, putting the word out to his most prolific collectors that his latest work would be one-of-a-kind. The $6.5 million sale was widely reported, but the backlash was swift, both against the photo's artistic value and the validity of the astronomical price tag. As the <i>New York Times</i> points out, the sale was both private and anonymous, so "it's hard to know what's 'official' about it."</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/buyer-beware-treat-peter-lik-photo-sale-with-scepticism-20141212-125khz.html" target="_blank">Sydney Morning Herald</a>, an Australian newspaper, has taken Lik's unlikely sale to task, citing the lack of documentary proof of the sale aside from the press release and advices to be </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: left;">skeptical of the sale because</span></span></div>
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<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">The work was sold privately to an unknown buyer and no documentary proof beyond a press release of the sale appears to have been provided.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Lik's work has been ignored by major public art galleries and dismissed by critics.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">When his photos have gone up for public auction, they have not sold well.</span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Art consultant </span><span style="color: #444444;">David Hulme</span><span style="color: #666666;">, who in 2012 warned against collecting Lik "</span><i><span style="color: #444444;">because Peter Lik's photographs have no secondary market presence or value</span></i><span style="color: #666666;">," routinely fields calls from Lik owners who are hoping for a profitable resale. He told the </span><i style="color: #666666;">New York Times</i><span style="color: #666666;"> that he worries that Lik's tiered pricing structure is "</span><i><span style="color: #444444;">misleading</span></i><span style="color: #666666;">" customers, understandably causing them to assume that the outside market will reflect the ever-rising prices charged by the artist. And </span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #444444;">Michael Hoppen</span></span><span style="color: #666666;">, a gallery owner in London, was quoted by </span><i style="color: #666666;">The Independent</i><span style="color: #666666;"> in England, "</span><i><span style="color: #444444;">[Phantom] is an abomination. Art, whatever, the medium, is something that moves and informs you or changes your opinion. This has nothing to do with art or creative photography, and the tragedy is that it brings the whole business down.</span></i><span style="color: #666666;">"</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The art world is full of ridiculous egos.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Peter Lik's claims to be the "world's most influential fine art photographer" and "one of the most important artists of the 21st century". But there are not many who would follow his view...</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">So here is my conclusion on this whole even episode:</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">If you have enough money and like Peter Lik‘s work - go for it. But don‘t expect that the worth will rise. (And maybe you should also take into consideration that there are hundreds of photographers that to much better work then Lik ever will do).</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">If you want to invest your money in art, hoping do get more out of it - don‘t buy Lik‘s work. You only would lose money...</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>This is a follow up of my 2014 articel at my <a href="http://cdematte.blogspot.ru/2014/12/the-most-expensive-photo.html" target="_blank">art connected</a> blog.</i></span></span></div>
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-24991654677912739372015-12-04T11:10:00.000+01:002015-12-08T10:13:44.829+01:00A/P, B.A.T., 3/25 - WHAT'S IN A SIGNATURE?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wpIqyN9xZUU/VmFhcvq-rGI/AAAAAAAAFR8/WAeRrlRwOQ4/s1600/Signat_recto.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wpIqyN9xZUU/VmFhcvq-rGI/AAAAAAAAFR8/WAeRrlRwOQ4/s1600/Signat_recto.png" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444;"> </span><span style="color: #666666;">As with so many things in the universe of Art Photography there are no clear rules or commonly agreed conventions for signing an artwork. And as with so many things in the universe of Art Photography there are many different opinions even between photography dealers, collectors or curators. Historically there are many bodies of work that were routinely not signed. With 19th century work, a handful of artists either signed their prints or affixed facsimile signature ink-stamps...but many more did not.—in the 20th century, important figures like Eugene Atget basically never signed his prints and Alfred Stieglitz did so rather rarely. With contemporary work, it is natural for collectors to expect that all works would be signed. Again: There are no rules and it very much depends on the artist. An unsigned contemporary photograph by Ansel Adams is a problem, an unsigned Walker Evans is not unusual</span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666;">.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">As there are no norms in this particular instance you will find a lot of variations. Signatures on the picture itself, </span><b style="color: #444444;">verso</b><span style="color: #444444;"> </span><span style="color: #666666;">(i.e. on the back) or </span><span style="color: #444444;">r</span><b style="color: #444444;">ecto</b><span style="color: #444444;"> </span><span style="color: #666666;">(i.e. on the front). Sometimes you may find a </span><b style="color: #444444;">C.A.T.</b><span style="color: #444444;"> </span><span style="color: #666666;">(i.e. a „Certificate of Authenticity“ stamped on the back), sometimes you wouldn‘t find anything of this...</span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eR2LKExPepk/VmFjEcuZJlI/AAAAAAAAFSM/YyhvBVFddko/s1600/Signat_verso.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="307" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eR2LKExPepk/VmFjEcuZJlI/AAAAAAAAFSM/YyhvBVFddko/s400/Signat_verso.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Some kind of a C.A.T.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">1/99</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666;">Such numbers are pointing out that this particularly print is part of a </span><b><span style="color: #444444;">Limited Edition</span></b><span style="color: #666666;"> (in our case Print 1 out of an edition of 99). </span></span><span style="color: #666666; letter-spacing: 0px;">A limited edition is normally hand signed and numbered by the artist. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666;">Again, there are no clear definitions. In some countries (e.g. in 14 states of the USA, in Great Britain or New Zealand; in France, it is a legal requirement to edition your prints to 25 copies or less) there are laws defining a </span></span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666;">imited edition“, in others there are more or less generally agreed conventions (e.g in Australia, where limited editions rarely number more than 99 and are often less). Many Limited Editions are </span><b><span style="color: #444444;">Portfolio</span></b><span style="color: #666666;">s, which is a group of photographs with some unifying concept published together.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">In generally one can say that a </span><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Limited Edition“</span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> is</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">produced directly from the artist‘s original work</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">directly by the artist or under direct supervision</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">signed and numbered by the artist</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">You may not find the artist‘s signature only but from time to time some abbreviations like A/P. Most of them derive from the printing craft</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: normal;">: </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>A/P</b> (<b>Artist‘s Proof)</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Usually about 10% of the total number of prints in an edition remain the property of the artist, and are called Artist's Proofs. They are identical with the other impressions in the edition. Artists usually use them for their personal portfolio or for special exhibition.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: normal;"><b>P.P. </b>(<b>Printer‘s Proof), </b></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>W.P. (Working Proof</b>), <b>B.A.T. („Bon A Trier“)</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">An impression of the finished work that is identical to the numbered copies. Identifies a proof which will serve as the standard to be maintained during the printing of an edition. This originate from the times when the artist didn‘t to the printing by himself. (Henri Cartier-Bresson for example almost never did his own printing.) </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: #444444;">H.C. („Hors de Commerce“)</span></b><br /><span style="color: #666666;">
Prints that are given to someone personally by the artist or are for some reason unsuitable for sale are marked "H. C." or "H/C", meaning "hors de commerce", not for sale.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: #444444;">U.S. (Unique State)</span></b><br /><span style="color: #666666;">
A print that is one of a kind. Meaning that there is only this one, unique print.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Several years before his death, Andy Warhol signed his name on copies of the tabloid magazine <i>Interview </i>(of which he was the editor). Regularly costing $2, he charged buyers $50 for these signed copies and they sold pretty fast...</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i style="text-align: justify;">Filed under [<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7357395427141583112#editor/target=page;pageID=3570942066528224085;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=3;src=pagename">Collector's Basics</a>]</i></span></span></div>
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-71603877695237988462015-12-03T11:26:00.000+01:002015-12-08T10:13:30.115+01:00FROM DAGUERROTYPE TO GICLÉE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">A (incomplete) history of photographic processes.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> Browsing catalogs (may it be from an auction, exhibition or collections) you will find in the picture‘s description a lot of informations. Some of them are quite clear like the name of the photographer, the year the picture was taken, the title etc. Some are not so obvious like the description of the used photographic process...</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7CynBJ046oE/VmARhcAeuJI/AAAAAAAAFRY/SX5Vlt12nL0/s1600/Westlicht01.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7CynBJ046oE/VmARhcAeuJI/AAAAAAAAFRY/SX5Vlt12nL0/s1600/Westlicht01.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;">An example from an online auction catalog (13th Westlicht Photographica Auction, Nov. 2015)</i></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> As you can see on above sample it says „Vintage Silver print“. Now this actually is an intermixture of two different definition: „Silver print“ is the photographic process involved while „Vintage print“ has nothing to do with it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">What is a „Vintage Print“?</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">A vintage print is made during the artist‘s lifetime, by the artist or under his/her close supervision. A vintage print is usually priced higher than other print types because it can be seen as the original. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">What is a „Modern Print“?</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Usually a print made long time after the artist has made the negative and without his/her supervision. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">In order for them to have value, they must be printed by someone who knew the photographer personally and had a sound knowledge of how he or she wanted his photographs to look.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"> So now to the </span><b><span style="color: #444444;">photographic processes</span></b><span style="color: #666666;">. As there where so many different processes especially in the pioneer era of photography (when almost every photographer invented his own process) I will mention here only the most important ones, those you will encounter very often.</span></span></span></div>
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<b style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Daguerrotype (1839)</span></b></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The daguerreotype, invented by Louis-Jagues-Mandè Daguerre and introduced in 1839, was the first publicly announced photographic process, and for nearly twenty years, it was the one most commonly used. By 1860, new processes which were less expensive and produced more easily viewed images had almost completely replaced it. The whole process was quite complicated involving a silver-plated copper sheet, long exposure times and a lot of chemical treatment (eg with mercury vapor). </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">As there is no negative to make prints from a </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">daguerrotype is always an unique copy (which </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">could only be duplicated by copying it with a camera).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Ambrotype</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">or <i>amphitype</i>, introduced in the 1850s, also known as a collodion positive, is a positive photograph on glass. Like a print on paper, it is viewed by reflected light. Like the daguerrotype, each is a unique original that could only be duplicated by using a camera to copy it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #444444;">Calotype (1841)</span><span style="color: #666666;"> </span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">or <i>talbotype</i> is an early process introduced in 1841 by William Henry Fox Talbot, a Scottish scientist, inventor and photography pioneer, using paper coated with silver iodide. The calotype process produced a translucent original negative image from which multiple positives could be made by simple contact printing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666;"> In the final decades of the 19th century the negative process was further developed. 1851 Scott Archer invented the </span><b><span style="color: #444444;">wet plate (or collodion) process,</span></b><span style="color: #666666;"> using glass plates as carrier for the light sensitive silver emulsion, 1879 the first </span><b><span style="color: #444444;">dry plate</span></b><span style="color: #666666;"> factory was founded, celluloid was introduced as carrier agent, which was replaced in the 1950s with acetate. In 1881 Gorge Eastman founded Kodak („You press the button, we do the rest“), and it was the Kodak Company, which presented in 1989 the first megapixel sensor for digital cameras. </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">But all of this is important for the negative process only.</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">For the final print one needed the positive process, and over the time a lot of different processes where developed. Here are the most commonly used, the one you most likely will find around auctions (and some of them are still used by contemporary artists).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Salt print</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The salt print, created by Henry Fox Talbot, was the dominant paper-based photographic process for producing positive prints during the period from 1839 through approximately 1860. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Albumen print</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">also called <i>albumen silver print</i>, was published in January 1847</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: normal;"><sup> </sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">and was the first commercially exploitable method of producing a photograph on a paper base from a negative It used the albumen found in egg whites in to bind the photographic chemicals to the paper and became the dominant form of photographic positives from 1855 to the turn of the 20th century, with a peak in the 1860-90 period.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Platinum print,</b> <b>Palladium print</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Platinum prints, also called<i> platinotypes</i>, are photographic prints made by a monochrome printing process that provides a large tonal range<span style="font-size: x-small;">. </span></span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">The palladiotype is a less-common variant of the platinotype. The process came into greater use after World War I because the platinum used in the more-common platinotype quickly became too expensive, so photographers tried to replace the platinum with the much cheaper palladium which gave similar effects.</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">or <i>gelatin silver process</i> is the photographic process used with currently (still) available black-and-white films and printing papers. A suspension of silver salts in gelatine is coated onto a support such as flexible plastic or film, baryta paper, or resin-coated paper. These light-sensitive materials are stable under normal keeping conditions and are able to be exposed and processed even many years after their manufacture. Gelatin silver printing was the dominant photographic process from introduction in the 1880s until the 1960s when it was eclipsed by consumer color photography. The gelatin silver or black-and-white print is thus a primary form of visual documentation in the 20th century. Its widespread use in applications as wide-ranging as fine art, snap shots, and document reproduction led to an extraordinary variety of papers with a wide range of available surface texture and gloss, and paper thickness.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">An oddity in the history of print processes, which is nothing else but a silver print. The story behind: In 1927, not long after he decided to become a professional photographer, Ansel Adams published a portfolio of 18 silver gelatin photographic prints (in an edition of 100 copies, plus 10 artist's copies) named „Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras“. The term "parmelian" was a meaningless word invented by Jean Moore (the publisher), who believed that calling them "photographic prints" would not allow them to be taken seriously as art.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: normal;"><sup> </sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Adams later said "I am not proud at allowing this breach of faith in my medium." </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;"><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Chromogenic color prints</b><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">(Analogue C-Prints)</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">are full-color photographic prints made using chromogenic materials and processes. These prints may be produced from an original which is a color negative, slide or digital image. The chromogenic print process was nearly synonymous with the 20th-century color snapshot</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Lambda prints</b> <b>(Digital C-Prints)</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">A system that uses lasers to expose light-sensitive material to produce a latent image that is then developed using conventional silver-based photographic chemicals. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">is a dye destruction positive-to-positive photographic process used for the reproduction of slides on photographic paper. Since it uses 13 layers of azo dyes sealed in a polyester base, the print will not fade, discolor, or deteriorate for an extended time</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: normal;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666;">Nowadays, in the age of </span><b><span style="color: #444444;">digital printing</span></b><span style="color: #666666;">, there is no convention anymore for the naming of the used process. You can find merely different designations like </span><span style="color: #444444;"><b>Inkjet Print</b>, <b>Pigment Print</b>, <b>Archival Pigment Print</b>, <b>Pigment Ink Print</b></span><span style="color: #666666;"> or </span><b><span style="color: #444444;">Giclée Print</span></b><span style="color: #666666;">.</span><b style="color: #666666;"> </b><span style="color: #666666;">All of them are printed on inkjet printers</span></span><span style="color: #666666; letter-spacing: 0px;">, </span><span style="color: #666666; letter-spacing: 0px;">also<b> </b>giclée has become synonymous with fine art reproductions printed a high-end inkjet printer and pigmented inks.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #666666; letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>There are much more photographic processes and i listed here only the most commen one. If you find something not listed here - I will tryto solve it for you.</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>Filed under [<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7357395427141583112#editor/target=page;pageID=3570942066528224085;onPublishedMenu=pages;onClosedMenu=pages;postNum=3;src=pagename">Collector's Basics</a>]</i></span></span></div>
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-179002837905723692015-12-02T11:51:00.001+01:002015-12-03T10:59:04.070+01:00UNDERSTANDING THE MARKET<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7T3dRyKUngI/Vl7CGm6x6UI/AAAAAAAAFQ4/gg7yMewGh7s/s1600/Bagni_Pano.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7T3dRyKUngI/Vl7CGm6x6UI/AAAAAAAAFQ4/gg7yMewGh7s/s1600/Bagni_Pano.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">There are multiple sources of photographic art, falling into one of two general categories although there will be some cross over from time to time. You have to keep in mind that for the artist there is a very big different between this two markets: Only when his work is sold at the primary market he/she actually earns money. If the work is sold at the secondary market he/she may not even learn about it...</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b style="background-color: white;">Primary Market</b> _ <i>Term for the sources of art works initially sold to collectors, usually through galleries, dealers, and at artist's shows, the 'first sale' of a work of art.</i></span></span><i> </i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Secondary Market </b>_ <i>Term for sources of art works that have been sold before and are available again for sale in the market place.</i></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>The Primary Market</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Primary markets are by definition the point of the first acquisition of a work of art. This is also the time when the price for the artwork is established for the first time. Primary market players are galleries, private dealers (Generally an individual without a display space regularly open to the public. They work by telephone, appointment, and most often with established clients.) and at times the artist themselves. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">In primary markets, prices are established by the artist as a condition of representation. All galleries who work with a contemporary photographer should be selling at the same price. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">There are some distinguishing marks which define a “good“ art dealer:</span></span><br />
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<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">The reputable Art Dealer is 100% behind the work he/she is selling</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Most reputable dealers have extensive libraries -many are art historians or collectors turned dealers.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Most reputable dealers are happy to educate, explain, and teach. They have a passion for the art they sell, and they want to communicate it. </span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Reputable dealers will also give full condition reports, and will document fading, foxing or other condition problems</span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>The Secondary Market</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Secondary markets are by definition involved in the acquisition and sale of work that has been owned previously. Key players in secondary markets are auction houses, private dealers, and some galleries. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The secondary market often establishes the market value of works of art at a point in time.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Prices on the secondary market can be pretty confusing: the internet is bringing more visibility, but because there are a lot of different factors that aren’t readily captured or noted, the internet is not bringing greater clarity. The key to remember is that while not all prints are the same, there are common factors that sellers use to establish the price. Those are: general market and economic conditions, image desirability and demand, image scarcity and supply, size, condition, period of printing, provenance, and image quality. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">For the works of deceased photographers, the secondary market is not only critical in establishing prices, but sometimes the only source of original photographs. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Auctions are public events, can be entertaining and exciting for bidders, and present a great opportunity to view and bid on multiple works of art at the same time. It is sometimes possible to get a good deal. Sometimes prices get pretty outrageous, so you have to exercise caution when bidding. One thing that some people are not aware of in bidding is that the hammer price is not the final price. At most auction houses, there is a buyer premium for 20-25%, which means if you bid $20,000 for a photograph, you aren’t picking it up until you pay the house $25,000.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Online Auctions</b> are a relatively new phenomenon which one has to take with a pinch of salt. Buyers are taking a chance buying original prints from an online or independent seller. If the buyer recognizes that and is willing to take that chance, then it might be worth it. There are some points to consider when you are buying at an online auction:</span></span></div>
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<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Is the seller accurately representing the item? </span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Is the seller accurately disclosing the condition? Damage can take the value all the way down to zero, if significant enough.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Is there an opportunity to return the item if not as described?</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Is there a satisfactory recourse if it becomes necessary?</span></li>
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<b style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The Contemporary Art Market</b><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">There are typically four different areas in the contemporary art market and most dealers will sell art from one or more of these areas. They are:</span></div>
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<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px; text-indent: -30px;">The <b>Reputable Print Marke</b>t which covers both "emerging artists" and established artists.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px; text-indent: -30px;">The<b> Avant-Garde</b> - otherwise known as "emerging artists". </span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px; text-indent: -30px;">The <b>Established artist</b> - This term covers artists whose work is well-known by the art-going </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; text-indent: -30px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">public, and represented in both </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px; text-indent: -30px;">private and museum collections.</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px; text-indent: -30px;"> </span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px; text-indent: -30px;">The <b>Contemporary Masters</b> - This covers artists who are generally acknowledged to be i</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; text-indent: -30px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">mportant figures in the history of </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px; text-indent: -30px;">contemporary art.</span></li>
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-59917886171986604202015-12-01T13:08:00.000+01:002015-12-01T13:08:29.517+01:00OPPORTUNITIES FOR COLLECTORS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I would be happy if you would purchase some of my work. But there are other opportunities too... ;-)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">If you want to start to collect fine art photography (or if you already in it) at a reasonable price there are some opportunities to add some nice artworks </span></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "\22 trebuchet ms\22 " , sans-serif;">to your collection</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">. Some well known photographers are doing from time to time online print sales. Although most likely it will be from an open edition it may be anyway a good opportunity to find one or the other artwork for your collection.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">From time to time I will point you to such print sales, especially if the are done by photographers whose work I would like to possess myself. Today I want to present you two print sales:</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">PETE TURNLEY</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">The first one is the </span><a href="http://www.peterturnley.com/2015-special-holiday-print-sale" style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;" target="_blank">“Vive La France“ Paris Print Sale</a><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> of two of Peter Turnley‘s works, done in cooperation with Mike Johnston‘s </span><a href="http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/blog_index.html" style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;" target="_blank">“The Online Photographer“</a><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> Blog.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Peter Turnley and TOP are making available Peter's two most popular Paris prints at what he has long considered full size, on 16x20 inch (appr. 40 x 50 cm) paper.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Peter Turnley, <i>Paris, 1991</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">These are fiber-base silver-gelatin prints signed by the photographer. The price is $450 for one print and $375 for a second one. (This is far lower than the "everyday" price for these prints, and the lowest price that either print has ever been available for.) And because the pictures are of Paris, a portion of the proceeds of the sale will be donated to the French Red Cross for the victims of the Paris attacks and their families.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">This print sale is time-limited rather than number-limited. Orders are taken until this Friday (Dec. 4th). All orders will be shipped to arrive in time for Christmas.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">COLE THOMPSON</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The second opportunity for purchasing a fine work of art photography is given by <a href="http://www.photographyblackwhite.com/" target="_blank">Cole Thompson</a>. </span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0C3ZVJJXADk/Vl2L_OH2XsI/AAAAAAAAFPc/OI75oU4ZzNw/s1600/Thompson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="425" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0C3ZVJJXADk/Vl2L_OH2XsI/AAAAAAAAFPc/OI75oU4ZzNw/s640/Thompson.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Cole Thompson, <i>The Angel Gabriel</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Cole is selling a limited numbers of prints of his well known „The Angel Gabriel“ for the very special price of $100 which includes shipping. The print is 8x12 inch (appr. 20 x 25 cm) on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">And there is always the possibility to get some of my artwork <a href="http://chrisdematte.com/collections.htm">here</a>. </span></span></div>
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7357395427141583112.post-41312229406824293522015-11-30T10:52:00.003+01:002015-12-02T08:56:26.097+01:00SOME THOUGHTS ON PHOTOGRAPHY<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">So this is my first posting in my new blog. I was thinking a lot what to post because it would (and should) point in the direction this blog will (and should) go. If you are into photography you for sure can't go past someone like Ansel Adams (at least not if you are a photographer from my generation). Over the 40 years of my career as a photographer I have collected a lot of quotes by this great (landscape-)photographer. Most of them where quite heartening and helpfully, especially in times of doubts and uncertainty on one's own work so it is deemed appropriate to look a little bit closer on some of his remarks. Because it is not only the gear one is using which is the foundation of a good photograph. There is so much more behind all technical aspects and theories of photography. In my oppinion in a (still to be written) "Photographer's Bibel" Ansel Adam's thought will have a very prominent place...</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.”</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>“A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.” </i></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>“A photograph is usually looked at – seldom looked into.”</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i style="text-align: justify;">“</i><i>There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.</i></span></span><i style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">”</i></div>
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<i style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">“The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the print the performance.”</span></i></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>“No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.”</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>“</i><i>There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.</i></span></span><i style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">”</i><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Also in my photographer's life I didn't model myself on Ansel Adams (partly because I got the feeling that he didn't develop further and was in the end to much obsessed with the darkroom techniques) nonetheless every single quote has been a good guideline...</span></span><br />
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Chris Demattéhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04052926223469703179noreply@blogger.com0