'Too Much of a Good Thing' by Richard B. Woodward

Some of you might remember L. Fritz and Renate Gruber's The Imaginary Photo Museum, a book about a photo collection they would have put together—if they'd had the resources. Well, you might be interested to know that I've edited a wonderful book called "Readings for Photographers" that compiles some of the most crucial, most interesting, and best written article- or essay-length pieces written about photography in the past thirty years.

Only one problem, one small snag: it, too, is imaginary. All in my head. You know what they say: oh well.

Some of the pieces my imaginary anthology would contain are available online, however, and, thanks to Fazal Majid, I just became aware of another one.

Now, a word of caution: it might seem like schadenfreude for me to point to this, or maybe even like vengefulness, since I had a very public row with Walter Rosenblum in the pages of a magazine long ago. So my motives might be suspected. However, I think that Richard B. Woodward's article "Too Much of a Good Thing," from the June, 2003 issue of The Atlantic (the publication formerly known as The Atlantic Monthly) is one of those must-reads. In Richard's usual impeccable style (I don't know him, and don't know much about him, but I enjoy his work), it lays out one of photography's great recent scandals—or as much of the surface layer of it as is fit to be made public. Along the way, it brings up a lot of questions, some treated in the article and many more implied.

It's a bit long for reading comfortably onscreen, but you might print it out for one of those times when you have ten or fifteen minutes quiet and free. And you can imagine you're reading my anthology, if you like.

Lewis Hine, Power house mechanic working on steam pump, 1920

Mike
(Thanks to Fazal)

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Featured Comment by Calvin Amari: "Edward Dolnick in his book The Forger's Spell notes that new forgeries of old masters tend to show something of contemporary sensibilities. Counter-intuitively, these modern stylistic elements make us more rather than less susceptible to the forger's trap—at least for a considerable period of time, perhaps decades, until sylistic sensibilities shift. I was reminded of this given the market acceptance of modern prints of Hine's Powerhouse Mechanic.

"While I don't know the story behind it, have you seen that variant that is printed in square format with everything outside the circular element of the steam engine printed in pure black? Talk about modern sensibilities—that looks like a Mapplethorpe!

"Incidentally, do you know what is stamped the verso of many vintage (but also some spurious 'vintage') prints by this great documentarian? 'Lewis W. Hine Interpretive Photography.' "

Featured Comment by David Dyer-Bennet: "I strongly support the art market's fixation on 'vintage prints'—it makes it much more likely that real people like me can acquire great prints of great images, while the collectors fight over the old tattered bad prints made on bad materials before the artist's talents matured."

Comments

[John]

"Some of the pieces my imaginary anthology would contain are available online, however..."

Mike, I (and surely many others) would be very grateful for some links.

[Geoff Wittig]

That's a great article on the Hine "vintage" prints; I read it avidly when it was first published. The Rosenblums evidently picked the wrong mark in Mattis, who turned out to be relentless and resourceful in researching the prints once his suspicion was aroused.

I've never quite comprehended the art market's fetish for vintage prints. David Vestal pungently notes that he's embarrassed by the poor quality of his earlier prints compared to more recent products of his mature skill. The same is surely true of the work of other luminaries. The earliest iterations of a photographer's recognized masterpieces are often the weakest, printed on inferior materials with limited skill. The artist's mature work is almost always technically far superior. Yet the market values a tattered, dog-eared work print, stained and fading from inadequate washing, higher than an immaculate later print from the hand of the artist. I just can't get my head around the idea.

[David Paterson]

"Too much of a good thing" is a cautionary tale in many ways, but primarily it's a warning of what happens when people (the art market) put the importance of the print before the importance of the image.

[mwg]

You could put those few links you have on a separate page and put a link to it on the sidebar.

(Or so 37 of us will have said by the time you moderate this post. :)

[Yuanchung Lee]

I would very much welcome links to Mike's imaginary anthology.

For now, though, others may be interested in learning that Eric Ethridge has posted PDFs of a couple of truly terrific (and long out-of-print or otherwise difficult to find) critical essays by Tod Papageorge (occasional visitor to TOP?) on his blog, as part of some sort of "Missing Criticism" project.

This is the link to Papageorge's essay on Robert Adams:

http://ericetheridge.com/wordblog/archives/2008/04/the_missing_cri_1.html

and this is the link to his essay on Walker Evans and Robert Frank:

http://ericetheridge.com/wordblog/archives/2007/08/the_missing_cri.html

Along the same lines, I recently purchased (via Amazon) Vicki Goldberg's anthology, "Photography in Print," which seems to have loads of great stuff.

[Miserere]

Mike, add me to the long list (once the comments show up) of people requesting that you put together a PDF with those essays. All proceeds from its sale can go towards paying your legal fees when you get sued by the authors.

[Gordon Lewis]

This raises the question in my mind of how today's inkjet prints will be valued thirty or more years from now. Will collectors still be concerned whether the paper and inks are of the proper vintage? And imagine how much easier it will be for unscrupulous sellers to make a few extra copies of a digital file let behind by the photographer. Will it still be when the image was printed that matters most or will there be some other way of valuing photographs? All I know for sure is that I won't be around to find out.

[Wilhelm]

Interesting article -- I had no idea!
It just reinforces the oldest mantra about buying any kind of art: "buy it because you love it, not because it may become more valuable."
I have no sympathy for someone who buys a photograph as an investment, then complains that they paid too much -- nobody twisted their arm.

[Mike Johnston]

"I have no sympathy for someone who buys a photograph as an investment, then complains that they paid too much -- nobody twisted their arm."

But surely you can have some sympathy for a person who is told, by a person who is supposed to be an impartial expert, that he is buying one thing, when in fact he is buying another thing altogether, and the expert is not impartial at all, but a confidence man. No?

Mike

[Damon Schreiber]

Great article, and I'm in favour of your not compiling a list of your recommended reads - or anthology if you prefer, at least not right away. Better to reveal them in dribs and drabs so as not to overwhelm us. Better to keep us coming back for more. As it is, I'll be busy reading the articles Yuanchung Lee linked to for a while.

[Timprov]

"But surely you can have some sympathy for a person who is told, by a person who is supposed to be an impartial expert, that he is buying one thing, when in fact he is buying another thing altogether, and the expert is not impartial at all, but a confidence man. No?"

If the two things are otherwise indistinguishable, then I for one not only have no sympathy, but have a hard time objecting to anyone taking advantage of such a person. It's precisely the appropriate consequence for divorcing art from content.

[Miserere]

I just finished reading the article over a nice cup of tea. In the end I'm left thinking, like others, that you should buy a photograph for what it represents (i.e., the image itself), not for the status it may have.

I would never pay thousands of dollars for an original Ansel Adams if I could get the very same photograph, printed identically by somebody else, for $40. Then again, I can't even afford to upgrade my camera—maybe I would think differently if I had thousands of spare dollars in my bank account.

[Bron Janulis]

Great article.

"Another factor casting doubt on the authenticity of all these "vintage" Hines is that many look eerily like Rosenblum's own photographs. The Chicago dealer Alan Koppel first pointed out the likeness, to the Santa Fe dealer Andrew Smith at an Association of International Photography Art Dealers show at the New York Hilton in February of 1999. Smith had a gorgeous print of Hine's Three Riveters hanging in his booth. Koppel stopped by and observed that the Rosenblum photographs he had seen and the Hine prints that dealers had bought from the Rosenblums had a "similar tonality—the same clean, hard surface and cold grays.""

Connoisseurship is a good thing; you know, looking and seeing. Which are not the same.

[Bron Janulis]

"since I had a very public row with Walter Rosenblum in the pages of a magazine long ago"

Oh, do tell, do do!

[Jan Fritzche]

Who is Calvin Amari?

[Mike Johnston]

"Who is Calvin Amari?"

A passing squid. Floats by here every so often.

Mike

(P.S. Don't tell I told, but calamari is the "nom-de-web" of a big-time photography collector. He will deny that adjective.)

[Cyril]

Yay for a "Top 10 recommended essays about photography".

As long as #2 is revealed a month later.

[Calvin Amari]

I would like to wring the neck of the honking canard that I'm a big-time photo collector. Consider me instead simply a reminder to Mike that there commonly exist creatures with brains only one-sixth the size of their ink sacs.

- Calvin Amari