RE: Rotating Josef was Actual Photograph

Dick,

Thanks for sharing that carbon ink link. That stuff reads like something
out of the Onion: almost convincing enough that you get the feeling the
writer was serious.

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Sullivan [mailto:richsul@earthlink.net]
Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2005 10:41 AM
To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
Subject: Rotating Josef was Actual Photograph

Katherine,

I'm pretty much of a doofer when it comes to gallery prices myself. I was
being kind saying that some digital was sold at the lower level market. I
also actually have seen some high end digital being sold but in very large
prints and in the non-photo ghetto market. There is a big crossover jump
where you end up selling in "real art" galleries rather than in "photo"
galleries. The Photo Ghetto tops out at about $5000.00 and the gap from
there is enormous, that's where the work goes in big time art galleries and
the prices go to 6 figures. This phenomenon is worthy of a master thesis.

Oh, and do I know your feeling about the digital. Last year I was asked to
donate a print for our local art center's auction. I donated the 8x10
platinum of the gas station that is in Christopher James' book and was
printed in View Camera. There is a copy in the Museum of New Mexico and one
in the collection of the Royal Photographic Society. It's not that I am a
big name in the gallery world or anything but this print was relegated to
the back room silent auction and brought down a whoppin $50.00. They didn't
label it as a platinum and there was no data on the image at all even
though I sent a full page description of it. The live auction had three
faux Cunningham magnolia (one I think was an Easter Lily) blossom type
pictures by three different photographers that were estimated at around
$600.00 per and they sold right off at about those prices. They asked for a
another print this year -- ha!

Art is not rational and certainly not art prices. As Judy said about the
Rolex, it has status value. That cannot be ignored in art. Platinum like it
or not has status value and any good image made by hand also has an added
status value because of that.

Nash editions has been selling Iris prints for better than 20 years now and
you rarely see them in the auction catalogs. That says something. Joan
Myers sells her Antarctica digital prints fairly well and she says they
sell better than the pt's. So there are some exceptions.

There is a certain sameness to a lot of the digital work being done. Last
year Olivia Parker showed some of her vintage work and some of her new
digital work. The general consensus from my students was the early work was
sublime, as one student put it. The new work resembled the stuff on the
Photoshop sample disk. Impressive for their manipulation but pretty shallow
in the long run. She also had the prints labeled as "pigment" prints. Josef
Sudek new nickname in heaven is now Rotating Josef.

I found this at:
http://www.cjcom.net/articles/carbonink.htm

>Ink based photographic prints are well established as works of art and
>have a long and distinguished history. You can spend enormous amounts of
>money buying one of those original editions, and the photogravures of
>Edward Sherrif Curtis bring high prices at auctions.
>
>The modern Carbon Ink Print is a unique blend of old and new technologies.

Ah the wondrous unique blend of the old and the new. Omygod, it fries my
gizzard* to even think about how we are linked in the spheres by our Epson
2200 to dear old Alfred!

At least he has the courtesy to call them carbon ink prints and not carbon
prints.

*Sorry I had to borrow that!
Received on Sat Mar 19 15:31:57 2005