The Online Photographer

Open Mike: Thoughts on Collecting

["Open Mike" is the often off-topic, anything-goes Editorial page of TOP. It appears on Wednesdays, with absolute dependability and regularity. —Ed.]

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Up front: I don't really know what I'm talking about here. When it comes to collecting, I'm not an expert, and not speaking from authority.

"Collection" is of course a colloquial word, with very generalized meaning. Trash is collected (picked up to be trucked away to the dump); any random gathering of things can be referred to as a collection (as in "there was quite a collection of single socks behind the dryer"); and collection to someone who has debts outstanding means something entirely different altogether—that they can be legally harassed, basically. I'm sure I'm the only one of us who knows anything about that.  :-)

But "collection" to a collector means something quite different and much more specific.

I first learned of the more stringent definitions through book collecting. One book that was crucial to my education was John Carter's very famous-within-its-universe ABC for Book Collectors. The product blurb calls it "the one indispensable guide to book collecting," and for once such a description does not exaggerate. The book is now in its 9th edition, updated by Nicolas (not Nicholas) Barker, and I would be very surprised if there were more than a tiny, tiny minority of serious book collectors who do not own it or have not read it. Still fewer who (gasp!) have not heard of it.

It will for one thing introduce you to book-peoples' humor. There's an old joke that a dry martini is made by standing across the room from a cocktail glass of gin and shouting, "VERMOUTH!" Well, a book person would not raise his or her voice, that's how dry they are. If one book person makes a joke to another, it will not be detectable to an observer except by watching the reaction of the recipient, and even then you will have to attend with great care: a very slight smile, the slightest mouse-like whimper of a laugh, or a barely perceptible eye-roll will be the only outward signs. Later the beneficiary of the joke might be observed chuckling—but with no proximate cause. The ABC (as it is known, simply) is a funny book. But you might not know it the first few times you read it.

The Cambridge Dictionary comes a little closer to a working definition of "collection": "A group of objects of one type that have been collected by one person or in one place." It's easy to do much better than that, since those conditions aren't actually necessary, e.g., a museum collection: a collection is a gathering of objects that is curated, has direction or focus, and is organized. Personally I think those are the three key conditions.

Curating implies the application of standards, sometimes of taste; a museum collection is not an expression of one person's taste, necessarily, but standards are certainly applied. Very often, though, a collection is personal, and it makes no sense and means nothing except as an expression of an individual's taste, knowledge, sentiment, or concerns. A key indicator of this is the ability to cull—to remove items from the collection that do not quite belong, to replace items with better examples, to express subtle changes in direction as the collection evolves.

Direction is imparted by means of what are called the "principles of collection." This usually starts as a written statement of the specifics of what one intends to do, or how one intends to go about collecting. There is usually generous provision for modification of these goals on the fly—because, you know, it's just you. For example, one might begin by "collecting the works of Dickens," discover in the process that early editions are not affordable or too popular, and shift to gathering late 19th- and early 20th-century reprints; some time later, one might realize that what one really loves about the books are the Victorian publishers' bindings, and so shift to collecting those. Some of the Dickens titles, acquired early on, then become the core of a broader collection of Victorian publishers' bindings, in which context they fit perfectly; but one no longer needs to include The Pickwick Papers—his rambling first novel, written before he had found his feet. (The principles of a collection can be modified, subtly or drastically, to include favorite lucky finds, to incorporate new interests, or to account for contingencies like finances and availability...and also to keep undesirable things out!)

Organization is what distinguishes collecting from hoarding! You're never a hoarder if it's organized and neat, even if you're collecting beer cans or bottle caps. I know a guy, Mark Noyszewski, a Chicagoan, who is a very accomplished collector of all sorts of pop-culture items from movie posters to comic books to Star Wars toys. He has thousands upon thousands of objects; but it is all magnificently, fastidiously, beautifully organized. He has a real gift for it. It's a key condition of a collection.

Here's a brief outline of some of the parameters you might try to set:

Title: A name for your collection

Limit: What size collection are you aiming toward?

Time of collection: How long are you going to work on it?

Type of collection: What's in it?

Budget per piece: How much will you spend? Set some limits.

Condition: You need some limits for yourself here too, with many things.

Period: What years were the objects you're after from?

Principles of collection: What defines what you're after?

I take a stab every now and then at trying to start a collection. I do not have the best track record. I've always been aware that I "have the gene," but I've responded to that by resisting it. I've never been a collector. I don't collect anything and I don't possess any collections. I have moving boxes filled with CDs and many more filled with books, but neither are collections. I have lots of cameras, but those are an accumulation, not a collection. I have lots of "stuff" but there's no direction inherent in any of it (stuff is better than junk but not old enough junk to be antiques).

I know there are some real collectors in the TOP audience, and I wonder what they think of these thoughts. Me, I'm just an aspirant, which is a nice two-dollar word for wannabee. The idea does fascinate me, though.

Mike

Product o' the Week:

Spiffy new Nikon for hipsters young and old! Buy it here and you keep our engine running.

 

Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Stan B.: "The only things I've consistently collected over the decades are photography books (i.e., artist monographs). They have long been a reliable and indefatigable source of: reflection, inspiration, edification....

"Although I've never bought a single one because of its potential collectibility, I've owned quite a few books that I know were worth several hundred dollars each (used). The question eventually becomes—what does one do with such a collection? One can always sell them off individually, the time invested can make for a worthwhile profit; or, donate them to an organization that will make proper use of them—and by 'proper use,' I mean: being seen, shared, and appreciated for what they are.

"I chose to explore the latter route and you'd think that many a photography-related organization that in any way deals with photographic education would at least be inquisitive about such a photo/documentary collection spanning the decades. I contacted well over a dozen photo organizations and never heard so much as a response!

"Finally, I contacted The Bronx Documentary Center, told them what I had available, advising them that the only catch was that they'd have to pay for shipping. I've now sent one dozen forty-pound boxes of books to their library; their students will hopefully gain from them as much as I have, and they're welcome to the remaining two or three boxes upon my demise. The cash definitely would have been nice, but not anywhere near as rewarding...."

Mike Chisholm: "Small but significant typo: it's Nicolas Barker. These things matter to us book people...[very slight smile emoji]. Mike."

Mike replies: Fixed. Thanks Mike.

Mike Ferron: "I have a drawer full of old Nikkormats. Must count for something right?"

Mike replies: I have one of those! They're hard to resist, aren't they? They look the business. But I have only one.

Christer Almqvist: "Getting rid of a collection can be as gratifying as accumulating it. I had too many books relating to photography. I felt buried under them when I went into my study. And I had lost relation to many of the photographers and their work. So when COVID meant hard times for bookshops I sold 90% of my photo books to my local book shop as my personal COVID assistance program. €25 per box of two dozen, or more. They charge €150 for one of them that I saw on display. I am so happy."

Michael Cytrynowicz: "Uh, Mike shouldn't you include the REASON / MOTIVATION why you are collecting something?"

Al G: "Collecting. Never did much of that. Always traded in old cameras for new. I did purchase an old Minolta SRT101 with a 58mm ƒ/1.4 because it was my first SLR, and was stolen during a break in. Nostalgia, not because it will gain any value.

"People collect some weird stuff though. Way back in 1976 I worked delivering sodas for a living. One of the supervisors approached me and asked if I would keep an eye out for any older returnable bottles that might be hanging around in the back room of grocery stores. That led to a discussion about collecting. He stated that he had a barbed wire collection and I scoffed. The next day he brought in a catalog about 50 pages thick. There were pieces about a foot long that were selling for way over $1k. In 1976?! Dang, who knew. He also said that the crates that vegetables and some fruits were delivered in were valuable because the ends were wood and had pictures of the company logo and perhaps a cherubic little boy or girl smiling and holding or consuming the product. Things are only worth what someone else is willing to pay."

Mike replies: I know a bottle collector. His wife says, "the basement is full of bottles."

Also, a friend in publishing told me a story once. He said a man queried them with a book he'd been working on for ten years. (This was well before the internet, by the way.) It was about duck-decoy collecting. It had hundreds of illustrations and was likely to be expensive to produce, and they assumed it could not have much of a market so they rejected it. The author sent a query again, with a cover letter saying, "you don't understand, this will be a definitive work on the subject, I'm an expert...." Again they rejected it. Presently the man appeared in person asking to meet with the editors. He explained earnestly that he knew what he was doing and that there was definitely an audience for his book. The editors were persuaded, so they took a flier and accepted it. Deluxe production, cost a lot of money. Well, you probably know the end of this story—perennial big seller, strong profits for the little publishing house year after year. Turns out, people who are passionate about duck-decoy collecting are really passionate about duck-decoy collecting, and there are way more of them than the number of people who actually collect duck decoys....

Darlene replies to Al G: "Guess who owns: CrateArt.com ? We sell only originals that never made it on the crate, and some can be very expensive, into the thousands of dollars. Been in business for 21 years now. It started as a spin-off from my commercial artist days (created lots of similar art), then took it to be a serious side income for retirement days."

Mike: That is so cool. What a great coincidence...and some of those are amazing!

Tom Z.: "I've found that applying rules and parameters can go too far and take the fun out of collecting, but then maybe I'm not a collector and I just like accumulating, organizing and using things I enjoy."

Kenneth Tanaka: Yes, 'collecting' is an odd topic of human behavior. Odd because the verb collecting is very distinct from its product, the noun collection.

"I’ve amassed over 700 photo books…yet I don’t consider myself a collector. I just buy the books of works that interest me. So I don’t really consider my books a 'collection.'

"Synonymously, among the many art and photo collectors I know, the one with perhaps the largest collection (easily into the mid-nine-figures) also largely just buys what interests her. She does now consider herself a collector but only after years of dealers calling her among their most prized collectors.

"Hoarding, I think, is the same behavior as collecting. But it’s untethered from any anchoring interests or objectives. It’s an illness, a mania. Collectors without genuine collections.

"On the flip side of that thought is a person who once asked me how she could start to collect photography. She had the urge but she also knew she wanted a collection to show for it. Today she has a very admirable collection of early and mid 20th photo prints on her walls.

"There’s also the variant where collecting seeps into one’s mien and social identity. Two years ago I had the privilege of helping catalog one of great intact collections of daguerreotypes. The man who had amassed it over 20 years wasn’t an artist or a scholar. He just found the things enchanting and gradually their pursuit consumed his free time and much of his social and travel time. (Dag collectors are actually a very small, tight group.)

"So it’s complicated. The bottom line: Unless a 'collector' amasses a verifiable legitimate (not necessarily financially valuable or even scarce, just intelligently describable) 'collection' they’re considered ill.

"Just my thoughts."

The Picture on the Penny

(I know. It's a cent, not a penny. The U.S. does not have any currency called a penny. But cent does not alliterate with picture.)

(Only I would start out a post with a parenthetical, right?)

On Fridays I usually try to leave you with something fun to see or visit for the weekend, but I just couldn't get to work yesterday. It's been a heckuva week. And I'm fried.

Summer reading
So here you go—two things. First of all, the Times* published a nice list of Summer Reading books. Of course they recommended as "Summer" reading more books than I read in an entire year, but never mind. The authors of the article did a nice thing—instead of putting each book under its own subhead, they wove the discussion of one book into the next, which caused me to read far more of them than I would have if I were scanning subtitles.

So in the Historical Fiction segment of the list I discovered a novel called The Bohemians by Jasmin Darznik. It's fiction, but is narrated in the first person by Dorothea Lange! I'm way too conservative about, you know, reality to be comfortable with this as a literary strategy, but apparently it's a thing that's now done. (I did read Grendel by John Gardner after reading Beowulf, but as "the real" Grendel was mythical, that's a bit different. Although Dorothea is a "monster" in the sense of being huge as a celebrity among Photo-Dawgs.) Anyway the author imagines what Dorothea is saying and thinking and that's the basis of the book. Ansel Adams and Imogen Cunningham, among other luminaries of Old San Francisco, put in cameo appearances.

Interesting. If you read the book, I'd love to know what you think.

The picture in your pocket
Second thing: "Pawn Stars" is not the place I'd expect to encounter a drop-dead great photograph, but the picture in this little video segment is just way, way cool—the photographer, the subject, the signature, the format (first time I've ever heard the term "parlor card," by the way—all such things were always cartes de visite in my reading) and what the picture was the basis for. The appraiser says it's "the top of the pyramid," and I can sure see why. I wouldn't want the responsibility of owning this, but it really does have it all as they say. Wow.

Enjoy.

Mike

*I live in New York. I know "The Times" = "...of London" in the UK, but to a New Yorker "the Times" is The New York Times. As a New Yorker I also read The New Yorker, come to that. Have a nice weekend!

Book of Interest this week:

Ralph Eugene Meatyard: American Mystic (Fraenkel Gallery, 2017). An excellent introduction to Meatyard's quirky, spooky worlds. "Photography is a dream of awaking to a world still dewed in sleep." And Fraenkel Gallery's productions are always a cut above. The link is a doorway to Amazon.

Also sponsored by...

Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Sunday Support Group: Impulse, or Compulsion?

Every time I sell stuff on eBay I end up...buying stuff. I bought another film camera a few days ago.

Geez. This marks what, five months since I swore up and down to myself that I would never, ever, under any circumstances ever buy another film camera again? Yeah, about that long.

It was a pure impulse purchase. I wasn't even looking at film cameras at the time.

I now own twelve, which might be a lifetime high number (I don't actually keep track), which I think you'll agree is very appropriate in light of the impressive amount of film I shoot every year, namely, nada, also expressible as "zilch." So I need all these cameras, obviously.

I had a girlfriend once who had such a thing for shoes that she seemed to be incapable of walking past a women's shoestore without being drawn inside by an invisible tractor beam. Shoes were like a compulsion with her. Well, can't imagine that.

But wow, look...I scored a Nikon N8008 for a mere $99 and it turned out to be new. In the box, with the protective film on the bottom and the JCII sticker fresh and sparkling. It even had the little plastic insert over the film gate. Not a mark of any kind on the thing. Looks untouched.

Of course, the seller might possibly have been being just a wee bit disingenuous even so—because the battery compartment was hard to open and the batteries, which the camera had obviously been stored with for a long time, had oxidized and bled some of that white crusty stuff (what is that, anyway?) on the insert and into the battery compartment.

Or possibly there was no intent to deceive; maybe the seller just didn't realize. It's possible. Things happen. People do pass away, loved ones put their belongings up on eBay without really knowing how or if they work...things like that. Collections are broken up and sold. Things are parceled off to intermediaries for selling. Could have been quite innocent. Then again, maybe that's why a pristine LN Nikon was for sale at a measly ninety-nine bucks. And how come he described it as "in perfect working condition. All of the shutter speeds, program and manual modes, light meter, motor drive and all other functions are working as they should"? Really? How would he know that, with ancient dead-as-a-doornail batteries frozen in the battery well? Methinks the seller doth claim too much.

Caveat emptor all the way on Ye Olde Fleabay.

Anyway, an hour's soak of the battery holder in a weak solution of vinegar and a little careful swabbing of the battery compartment with a dry Q-tip, some fresh batteries, and all was forgiven.

For a camera that's 30 to 33 years old, this is a time capsule.

Leading edge but not bleeding edge
Takes me back (nostalgia being no doubt the main attraction here). In 1988–91, the original 8008's production run, Nikon pitched it as an amalgamated successor to both the FE2 and the FA. The FA was the first camera to feature what came to be called Matrix metering, although it was called "Automatic Multi-Pattern" (AMP) metering in the FA. That was the beginning of the end for photographers understanding how metering works. It boasted the "world's fastest autofocus" at the time. It's also very easy to focus with manual-focus AIS lenses, what with its AF-confirmation dot in the viewfinder.  It has auto-load and auto-wind and -rewind, ultramodern features in the '80s. Woo-hoo. It also had lots of of plastic, which alarmed everyone.

Oh, and I need to eat a little crow, too: remember the other day when I was expressing dismay that the new Pentax K-3 III will cost two thousand dollars? Well, the N8008 cost $857 when it was introduced in 1988, and that is, ahem, $1,934.37 in 2021 dollars. Hmm. Maybe the problem here is that my sense of the value of money is stuck in 1988?

I had two 8008's back then (for some reason no one then ever used the "N" when referring to it). I joined a professional studio with the condition that I would switch to Nikon, because the other three photographers all used Nikon and everyone pooled their equipment. Needed a particular lens for a job? Somebody had one. My Contax stuff wouldn't have been useful in the mix.

I wanted to get an F4s, and had one on order, but there was a several-month delay before it would be available, so I bought an 8008 to use in the meantime. When my F4s arrived, I de-accessioned the 8008, as planned. Then, after using the F4s for a year, I decided I actually liked the 8008 better! So I bought another one and sold the F4s. So this is my third of these.

I slugged it out as a pro for five years, although gradually my business and income shifted mainly to high-quality custom B&W printing for exhibition and reproduction. I was better at that than anyone in town. I was not better as a professional photographer than anyone in town.

Now all this old camera needs is an AF-Nikkor 35mm ƒ/2 D, which by a strange vagary of fortune is still available new. Not gonna do it, not gonna do it, not gonna....

The F4s was the camera that turned me off of big cameras, by the way. For the duration, as it turned out. What a portly beastie it was. (Paul, whose name was on the lease at our beautiful studio, called his Nikon F3 with full motor drive "Darth Vader." So of course he called my F4s "Luke." He was sadder than I was when Luke departed.)

Will I ever take a single picture with this survivor 8008? Probably not. But one thing's absolutely for certain this time: no more film cameras for me. This is it. No question. Never buying another one.

Believe me? Why of course you do. How could you doubt?

It's hip to be square
Meanwhile, back in the here and now, I've been taking pictures with the X-H1 using the widest lens I have, the 14mm prime (21mm equivalent), with the aspect ratio set on square. It's very different for me. Not the way I'm used to seeing at all. But I've been in a rut, so I'm shaking myself up. Trying to be more iconoclastic in my compositions, too, to loosen the visual calcification.

We'll see how that goes. But I always enjoy experiments.

And y'know, I do love photography, so it's all good.

Mike 

Books o' the Week

Nikon fan are ya? Nikon: A Celebration by British automotive writer and Nikon collector Brian Long covers the history of the company from its beginnings to the end of the film era. A U.S. parallel with more concentration on opinions about the equipment is B. Moose Peterson's Nikon System Handbook. The 6th Edition covered film equipment up to 2000. <—These are portals to Amazon.com thru TOP; you can also search for Nikon books from The Book Depository, which offers free shipping worldwide.

Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Ron Hoffer: "I sincerely took the same pledge around four years ago after I sold off the last of my Nikon SLR gear, figuring the remaining stable of six classic, elegant and capable film cameras (Leica M7; Contax T; Rollei 35; Hasselblad 501 CM; Rolleiflex T, and a folding medium-format Ikonta) should suffice for my occasional film shooting diversion from Fuji fan behavior. Barely a year passed before two lovely M-mount lenses passionately and successfully cried to join the brood. After all I could use these on my Fujis! But how to explain the purchase and then near immediate return of a rebought Nikon F3HP and then a Barnack Leica? Alas, their behavior suggested expensive repairs ahead. When the electronics of my pocket rocket Contax-T failed two months ago, I lost all resilience and succumbed to a Pentax Spotmatic; a chrome version of my first serious camera from 51 years ago. At least I chose two lenses that I never used before (a 35mm ƒ/3.5 and 55 mm ƒ/1.8). After a professional CLA, the camera reminds me of my youth, with a serious shutter 'clunk' and the benefits of small aperture hyper-focus to account for the crude groundless focusing. First rolls affirmed the glory of Takumar glass and home souping in Rodinal. So, the itch is satisfied for now; that is unless a Mamiya 6 or 7 crosses my path...!!!"

Crabby Umbo (partial comment): "I knew more than one fashion photographer that favored the 8008 over the F4. They first bought them as back-up, and then just started using them as their primary!"

Kye Wood: "The only cure to this specific ailment is this; have your collection (of whatever you keep purchasing) on the table in front of you. At all times. When you're presented with temptation, glance at the surfeit. The urge will immediately abate. I can guarantee that this strategy works for cameras, lenses, watches and guitars."

Malcolm Leader: "White powder? From the web: White Crystals and powder on the battery is potassium carbonate. This is electrolyte (potassium hydroxide) which reacted with O2 to form Potassium Carbonate. In this condition the battery is no longer usable. Potassium carbonate is a very strong alkaline and water soluble."

hugh crawford: "I used to use a 8008 and the dedicated flash that Nikon made for it because it had one really neat trick. You could set it up so if you held it over your head and were using autofocus the flash would project a spot where the camera was pointed. It was great for when a PR agency client was throwing a party at a nightclub and there were a lot of other photographers crowding around some celebrity. Stick your arm up, get the red spot on celebrity X, push the button, and you get the overhead eye-of-god photo of celebrity X surrounded by photographers. As an extra bonus you would often get them looking straight at the camera (because of the the mysterious red spotlight) with a puzzled expression as though they had just recognized someone.

"The PR people loved it since it showed that the celebrity came to the event, the press covered the event, and the celebrity was looking right at the camera.

"I didn’t really have any 35mm equipment at the time so I went into Lens & Repro where I was a frequent renter, and said that I needed to rent a camera for party/disco photography. The guy behind the counter said 'watch this,' did the red spot thing, and I was sold."

Mike replies: Great story! I never knew about that.

I was amazed at the sheer number of flash units pictured in the "System Information" brochure that came with the old Nikon. It made me reflect that one of the things that made Nikon top dog back in the day was its expertise with flash...no other camera came close. With today's extreme high ISO's making flash much less necessary, that could be another contributor to Nikon's decline these days.

Richard Man: "It's so cheap, I save money every time I buy!!!  ;-P  "

John Camp: "Back in the '90s, I had newspaper photographer friends who were secretly leaving the newspaper-supplied F4s's at home and using their N90's instead. The N90 I believe was the 8008 successor, and was a terrific camera that weighed about half of what an F4 weighed. That was important—PJs carried an immense amount of crap around with them, ready for anything, and some literally damaged their shoulders with the weight of their camera bags."

Mike replies: I used to believe I damaged my neck by draping heavy cameras around it and maybe I did. I had chronic neck pain for at least twenty years. Believe it or not, the thing that cured it was pool!  It didn't occur to me until after I bought first first pool table (in 2012 or so) that it might make my neck pain worse, but it did the opposite—something about leaning over above the cue and then raising up my head as far as I could stretched whatever needed to be stretched or strengthened whatever needed to be strengthened. In three weeks my old neck pain was gone, and it hasn't come back. It's amazing what the right exercises will do. Physical therapy is full of deep mysteries, I think.

Alex G: "I can still recall the desire I once felt for a Nikon F100. Sometimes I forget that it’s an old, obsolete desire and it feels very real. I satisfied that impulse pretty well with a N80, back in 2004...the last film camera I bought new. It came somewhat close to the F100. Fortunately I resold it while it still had some value. But these obsolete desires just live in your head alongside the names of ex girlfriends’ parents and the like."

David Brown: "eBay came close to being like crack to me in the late 1990s and early 2000s (I'm recovering...). At one time I owned 12 (Twelve!) 35mm SLRs that worked, and a couple or three that did not. I think (I would have to count) that I am down to six or eight now, and four medium format. Last frame of film? I don't remember."

A Confession

I find photographs in all sorts of places. And I'm almost radically egalitarian in how I'll prioritize their status.

I used to love "antiques" (junk) stores that had large collections of old snapshots. I loved to look through them and muse about what they showed, always aware that I could at any turn happen across that chance perfectly-imperfect one-in-a-thousand shot.

I seldom bought even those, though. I'm not a collector. I'd love to be, but I move around, I'm disorganized, and I'm not really a good steward of the objects I own. This pains me, but you're got to know your weaknesses.

This is what kind of collector I'd be. Extra credit:
know who this is? Hover over the image for a hint.

I've written a few times how fascinated I am by the "good" pictures people have on their smartphones—meaning, the ones that mean something to them and show things they want to show other people, and preserve. I like old postcards, Shorpy, collections of Kodachromes*, and so forth and so on. I especially like curated collections of ephemera...as an aside, I believe that editing and curation have recently become much more important in the culture of imagemaking. Our apprehension of this hasn't begun to catch up to the reality, but I think a lot of the creativity of the future might shift from the making of images to the collection and arrangement of them. There is just so much now, and it all gets lost in a sea of more and ever more.

Virtual tours
But I digress. Anyway, here's my confession...I love poking around on Zillow and on Google Street View. For the pictures. On Zillow you get to see inside peoples' houses—spit-shined and made presentable, mostly, but it's fascinating the way people can't quite entirely erase the traces of their lives and the way they lived inside their spaces. And I love interiors, as a genre of photography. Sometimes—not often, I'll admit—I come across an interior that looks as formally beautiful as a Vermeer. Of course, somebody photographed that, and that somebody might have self-described as a photographer or even been a professional. But just as often it was an anonymous realtor, or the owner, and the picture was meant to be utilitarian. Show off the nice garage.

On Google Street View you can virtually "walk" neighborhoods all over America—seeing what there is to see, and again getting a sense of how the (mostly absent) people occupy the spaces that are familiar to them. And just as with the old snapshot tables at junk stores, occasionally the random photograph taken automatically from the top of a moving vehicle magically arranges itself into a real photograph. It "arrests" me, that's the word—I stop, stilled, and stare. How did that happen?

I don't screen-grab it, though. My hard drive is already junky enough.

It's as close to the real magic in photography as the stuff I see in museums, the stuff that's presented with such great deference toward the status of the auteur, the curator, and the institution. Often, though, all that ego just gets in the way. The magic of photography is radically egalitarian—never plentiful, never easy to access, but open to all, anywhere, everywhere. Sometimes where you least expect it.

Mike

*I love how, at that link, the writeup has to start by explaining to people that "50 years ago, people used 35mm cameras like we use smartphones in the age of Instagram." Ha! I'm older now, and I'm a-living in the future....

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Marco Maroccolo: "The great Josef Sudek!"

Dennis: "A neat thing about Google Street View is that the view changes. Same with satellite views. They get updated every so often. A couple of years ago, three co-workers and I were walking to lunch from work and crossing a street single file when a Google truck photographed us. For a while, if you checked out the Street View, there we were doing an unintentional impression of the Beatles' Abbey Road cover. But that's been replaced by a newer set."

Francisco Cubas: "I couldn't agree more with your last paragraph. I see poetry exactly the same way. Borges wrote that poetry can appear in any simple conversation—it's not a prerogative of great books or great poets. As you say, its magic is radically egalitarian. Maybe all those institutions and powers just get in the way and make people think they're not worthy of art.

"About the shift from making to collecting images you may be interested in the late work and essays of Joan Foncuberta."

Ulrich Fraaß: "This is the famous photographer Josef Sudek (1896–1976) in his small studio in Praha. Unfortunately he lost his right arm during World War I."

Mike adds: If anyone out there reading this ever gets a chance to see Sudek prints in person, jump at it.

Mike Plews: "Sudek by Sonja Bullaty belongs on every photographer's bookshelf. Magic on every page."

Mike replies: I agree.

JG: "One other great thing about Google's Street View is that serves as a convenient, always and easily accessible time capsule. My father died in February 2017, yet no matter where I am, I can always log into Google Street View, scroll back to May, 2011, and see a photo of him in his car waiting at the stop sign a block from his house for the Google Street View car to pass."

Greg Heins: "The example of Sudek is especially pertinent now, in our shelter-in-place era. You could mount multiple exhibitions from the still-lifes he made in his tiny studio and then some more from the photographs he took of the window into his little garden with its solitary tree. Additionally, he lived from 1939 until his death in 1976 under either the Nazi or Soviet totalitarian regime. Many of his prints were made on whatever papers admirers in the West sent him. We are fortunate here in Boston to have a very choice selection of Sudeks available for viewing."

Martin D: "About a year ago you asked your readers to list their five favourite photographers. My list included Sudek. He is the odd one out in my photographic pantheon: the quiet voice of pure poetry amongst the prose of Hine, Evans, Abbott."

A Weird Little Collecting Idea

This is just an aside, really. "Neither here nor there" as they say. It's something that occurred to me on Tuesday.

People show me pictures on their phones. They think the pictures are remarkable in some way.

And sometimes they are.

Recall that "remarkable" means something worth remarking on. By definition, someone who shows you a picture because it delights them in some way, or because they find something appealing about it and think you will too, are "remarking" on it.

A friend recently passed around a photo of a hunter (her boyfriend) with a dead bison he shot. The two of them drove West for days so he could shoot the bison, then drove back. I don't have it to show you but it's a pretty amazing photograph (in my case partly because it was disturbing to me, but to each their own). Another showed me a photo of twin toddlers—his grandchildren—helping each other to raid the family refrigerator; one of them had climbed up into it, probably with the assistance of the other. As soon as I glanced at it, it struck me that it was a picture that was better than could be staged (real candids are like that). Another wonderful photograph. Again and again, people share pictures on their phones—either their own or that were sent to them by friends and family—that strike me as being very good photographs.

The dead bison picture and the raiding twin toddlers are just the most recent ones.

A friend who's a fisherman showed me this picture on his phone the other day

If I see someone showing another person a picture, it pulls me gravitationally, like men are drawn involuntarily to the sound of power tools or women to the sound of other women in a group cooing over a baby. I sidle over and see if I can get a look myself. I really want to see the picture. Or actually, not the picture—it's more that I want to see what kind of picture someone wanted to show to someone else.

The "remarkable" phones pics have something I miss in photography that is often present in vernacular photography from the past: most of the pictures show something that, for lack of a better phrase, was worth taking a picture of. Something remarkable.

I was just musing this morning whether I could collect peoples' remarkable phone pictures. I can't imagine asking my friend to send me that picture of his twin grandchildren, though. Why would I want it? They're not my grandchildren.

I could say something like, "hey, that's a great photograph. I collect great phone pictures. Could you send me that?" I'll bet a lot of people would.

It's not something I could do, though. I'm awkward with stuff like that. I don't have the personality to ask.

The idea intrigues me, though.

Mike
(Thanks to Jerry K.)

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Charlie Pratt's Prints

I've told this story before I'm sure, but Lord knows where.

Many years ago, the photographer John Gossage helped organize a show of photographs by Charles Pratt at the Corcoran Gallery. Charlie, who had died of a heart attack at his gym four years earlier at the age of 50, had been the scion of a wealthy industrialist family. It turned out that John had other connections with the Pratt family, which included helping Charlie's widow Julie publish several books of Charlie's photography. Julie was an actress—I believe she acted using her maiden name, Julie Follansbee. She died at 88 as Julie Follansbee-Pratt Shattuck. She acted in the movie Regarding Henry and in episodes of  Law & Order among other things. Charlie was primarily a photographer of Maine and its coast, and published Here On the Island during his lifetime, a book that has long been valued by collectors of "all things Maine."

Julie had also endowed a substantial but under-the-radar photography prize which John helped her to administrate—I'm not sure if it still exists, but I suspect not—and on one occasion I got to go with John on a friendly business visit to Julie in her Upper East Side townhouse in New York City. Together he and I explored Charlie's darkroom, which Julie had closed the door to but left intact. Julie herself was a lively, radiant woman, attractive, with white hair, who exuded a gentle, caring sort of spirit. Charlie, it turned out, had quietly sponsored many of the photographers he believed in—I'm not sure how, entirely, but in many cases by buying prints.

He bought the first print that Robert Frank ever sold, for instance, and he helped W. Eugene Smith by buying Gene's prints. Charlie had an East Street Gallery print washer in his darkroom—it was the first of the "archival" print washers from the early days of archival processing, when not much was known yet about print permanence and LE (life expectancy).

And, unfortunately, that was reflected in the way some of Charlie's treasured prints were hung in the dining room of the home. All the prints in the dining room were glued to same-sized Masonite rectangles and varnished on the front, with a smaller 1x2" frame stuck to the back for the hanging wire and so the print "floated" off the surface of the wall.

Looked nice. But that's about the opposite of archival treatment! Did the method of framing "ruin" the prints? I suppose so. I'm sure it had an impact on their value. But few people really knew any better in the early 1970s. (Charlie Pratt died in 1976.) Of course, the prints hanging on the wall were only a small part of Charlie's collection.

Here's what the New York Times said of Charlie Pratt's own prints in the Corcoran show at the time: "They have an authoritative presence that, for all their echoes of Minor White, Eliot Porter and Paul Caponigro, seems unique and original. Pratt was a masterful printer in black and white, and used this skill with precision and restraint, not bombast. The color prints on display are equally successful, showing Pratt's painterly knack for limiting each composition to two or three syncopated hues." Their quiet gentleness was what I liked about them. He photographed with a Pentax 6x7 and made very small prints.

On that day in New York, I had with me my Leica M6 and a 35mm Summicron loaded with Ilford XP-2, and the room was illuminated only by the late afternoon sunlight filtering through the leafy trees of the garden, through what I remember as French doors. Somewhere out in the barn I have a motion-blurred snapshot of John Gossage in the lovely garden-level dining room of Julie Pratt's mansion holding that print, the first one Robert Frank ever sold. Compromised by a method of presentation we no longer would favor, of course. But also a talisman of Charlie Pratt's kindness and support for the artists, and the art, he loved.

Mike
(Thanks to John G.)

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Two Stories About Collecting

I like collecting, and collectors, and collections. One of my personal favorite books is Nicholas Basbanes' A Gentle Madness, an entertaining tome about book collecting that deserves to be a classic. I wish I knew of a similar book about photo collecting, but I don't think there is one. There might not even be as good a single book about art collecting, but I don't know.

Anyway there are lots and lots of good collecting stories, and I thought I'd share a couple of my own, while the sale is still going on and we're on the subject.

It must have been in the 1990s when I went up to New York City one year for the AIPAD show. (AIPAD: Association of International Photography Art Dealers.) I knew Kathleen Ewing, who was the founder or maybe one of the founders of AIPAD, and who was involved early on in the show. Anyway at one booth there was some excitement over new prints by Josef Koudelka, who is one of my personal favorite photographers—Exiles might be my favorite photo book of all the ones I own. There was talk that the famously nomadic Koudelka was actually settling down, and had conceived a novel need in his life for something called money for which he had previously had little use, so he had enlisted a shadowy fine printer in Paris to make prints of his work for sale. The printer was the same man who made all of Cartier-Bresson's prints, people were saying. That marked the first time I had ever heard of Voja Mitrovic, Peter Tunrley's great and good friend who also printed his film negatives for years, although I didn't know Voja's name at the time.

I almost bought this. Key word "almost."
Still gives me a pang when I see it....

Anyway there were these beautiful, vivid, stunning prints of my favorite Koudelka pictures—not one but several of them—that I could hold in my hands. They cost $1,200, and I resolved to buy one. It was more than a lot of money for me at the time—it was a reckless amount of money. Buying two prints was out of the question, but I couldn't decide between two particular pictures, so I forced myself away from the booth to wander the floor and think over my decision. By the time I returned, "good" sense had gained the upper hand in my mind, dagnabbit, and I back out—chickened out? Anyway, I didn't buy one.

So guess what those very same '90s Koudelka prints go for now, at auction? $15,000 minimum. Most, more like $25,000.

I'm not saying that because of the investment implications, but because of the "replacement" cost—what it would cost me now to rectify my mistake of back then.

The not-a-collector collector
Investment implications lead me nicely into the second story, though, which concerns my friend Jim Sherwood, a very fine photographer in his own right who has done extensive projects over many years. Jim has grit—he's smart and also dogged. He decided early in his life that he couldn't be a collector—his day job was as the school system photographer for the public school system in Prince Georges County, Maryland—but he reasoned that he could buy one print every year. So every year he would save his money and buy himself one nice print for his birthday. Different photographer every year. Had to be something he could afford, of course.

But you know what? The years go by, and years turn into decades, and decades pile on top of each other—and Jim, who might not be a collector, has a collection—and a very nice one, too. He got priced out of many of the photographers he bought early on; he can no longer afford an Ansel Adams, for example. But that's okay, because he already owns one, bought years ago when he could afford it. When I saw the collection, it adorned most of the walls of his house, and it was stunning—it had real presence, real power. Some wonderful pictures by some resonant names.

At that time, he had two young daughters. Well, eventually those daughters grew up, and guess what Jim told me the last time we communicated? He needed to pay college tuition for one of his daughters, so he sold one of the prints from his collection...and it covered a pricey college education.

Ya love that.

There's no lesson here, no message. It's possible Jim just got in at the right time, and has a good eye and good taste and a photographer's knowledge of other photographers. He bought well. The collector—the person—counts. Mostly, I think what he likes is just living with all those pictures. That they turned out to be his retirement, and a better retirement than he could have gotten any other way, was serendipitous, just gravy. And of course, his consistent interest and devotion to photography over many years was crucial. (I really should see if I can do an interview with Jim—that would be interesting, for all of us. Wonder if he owns a Koudelka. Probably. Oy.)

Okay, there is one message—don't think you can't collect. It's a pastime that's infinitely variable and conceptually fluid. Anybody can be one.

All you have to do is want to.

Mike

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An "Eye-Muscle" Photography Collection Game

Here's how to make a photography collection for zero money that will exercise your taste, your discrimination, and your eye.

The Objective: Collect a cogent and coherent set of 35 photographic images from anywhere on the Internet by making screen grabs. Because you will only look at them yourself on your own computer, and not republish, exhibit, sell, or claim credit for them, you don't need to worry about rights—you can use anything you find. This is just an exercise, and just for your own edification.

The Rules:

1. The only thing that is off-limits are pictures already recognized as artistic, valuable, well-known, or otherwise recognized or sanctioned by others as "good" in some way. It takes no stretching whatsoever to screen-grab a JPEG of Weston's Pepper and Adams's Moonrise and say you're building an imaginary collection. Rather, you have to find out-of-the-way photographs that embody your themes and recognize their unique value for yourself. You might give yourself extra points for pictures that are purely utilitarian, such as pictures harvested from Google Street View, pictures from ads or eBay auctions, real-estate photos, catalogue photos of objects, screen grabs from YouTube videos, stock photos (but be careful not to republish these), Facebook photos meant for friendly communication, etc. Even porn if that's the way you roll—no one will see this unless you show it to them individually on your own monitor, so harvest from whatever sources you decide to allow.
2. You must be able to articulate your "principles of collection" and all the photographs must adhere to it in some way. Pay special attention to how the photographs work together—the sequencing, and how each relates to the whole. Hint 1: be flexible about your principles of collection and don't be afraid to change horses in midstream—follow your interest and the "energy" of the project. If you lose impetus or enthusiasm or find yourself bogging down, chances are you haven't hit on the idea that's really right for you, that energize you and nourish your real interest. Hint 2: Follow a visual interest more than a conceptual one. Something that satisfies a gut response, that gives you a feeling of gratification or satisfaction when you look at it with your eyes.
3. You must "love" (for your own definition of love!) every one of the 35!

As far as corrections are concerned, suit yourself, but I'd say you can crop and color-correct your finds; but don't "transform" them (to use the term from copyright law).

As far as what 'Principles of Collection' might mean, this might be a very fecund topic of conversation in a few days' time, but look to history or what you know of history. Joel Meyerowitz did a project called "Redheads," Karl Blossfeldt made analytical closeups of plant parts, or just look at one of the very basic themes of one of our Baker's Dozen posts, for example, "Yellow." Your collection idea could be centered around a place, an emotion, a genre, a type of equipment or media, a mood, a type of photographer—only you know what kinds of image most satisfy you in your gut and would therefore be fun to gather and sequence. Peter, for another example, did a book called French Kiss, and most of the pictures in the book featured couples or people kissing. Andre Kertesz did a book on reading. Take Peter's "Venice" picture from this sale for another example: legs. There's a principle of collection, if it resonates for you. Can you find 35 pictures of legs that form a balanced, coherent collection? If Peter's "Venice" picture was the first one in your collection, does the first photograph in the "Yellow" portfolio I just linked to work for you, or is it too similar or too different in some way that creates dissonance?

Pictures with dogs in them. Redneck vehicles. Pictures that include spheres. Old press photos. Pictures that include ice. Musical instruments made of metal. Forgotten photographers (MoMA did a show of this title in 1951). Rediscovered photographers. Snapshots. Pictures taken in the 1910s. Asian people. Black-and-white pictures taken on or in an ocean. Really, any interest, any source of satisfaction for your eye, is fair game. The sky's the limit. Pictures of sky, for that matter.

Brief example, which I found very quickly on the Web. Imagine your idea is something very simple like "symmetry":

You'd have to ask yourself, does the picture fit with the others in your Symmetry collection? Does it work strengthen the other pictures or clash with them? Do the slight asymmetries in the picture create pleasing tension, or detract from its symmetry? Do you actually love this after looking at it for three days? Maybe it will fit less well as you add more pictures and go in a different direction, and you like it now but you'll have to discard it later. Maybe it will shift the direction of your collection slightly and render several other pictures superfluous. You never know. Gotta stay flexible, keep the collection dynamic.

It's a picture I found quickly on eBay, illustrating an auction for the antique angle brackets. I liked the distressed wood.

Tip: Pick a simple theme and do one of these quickly to start with—dash it off, so to speak. All the while pondering what really interests you, what really grabs you, before you start a more serious collection. Or maybe do another quick one. Or just wait until a picture you stumble across in your Web-travels grabs you so hard that you just feel compelled to make a capture of it so you can look at it again and you think, Aha! This is something I could collect! And build from there.

I think if you do this exercise a couple of times, you'll have a pretty fair idea of what the practice of collecting—the nuts and bolts of it—is really all about. It's a rich subfield within the broader medium we call "photography," and it's one of the ways you can get, and be, involved. (Consider all the people who collect cameras.)

And for this, you don't need money. Because you see, in collecting, really, money is optional. What's required is your seriousness about it, your focus, your insight. Your organization and discipline. And, of course, whether you're able to find, and mine, the fun in it!

Mike

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A Few Musings About Collecting

I've always wanted to be a collector. I have the gene. (Although I don't have quite enough organizing ability.) But I've never had the means, or the space (which are two aspects of the same thing).

I've told this story on myself before, and it's embarrassing to me now, but it's also instructive.

When I was young I was very interested in books. In Washington D.C. I befriended Bill Hale of William F. Hale books and his mentor across the street, the novelist Larry McMurtry. Larry was first a reader, second a bookman, and third a writer of novels—he won the Pulitzer Prize for his epic Western Lonesome Dove in 1985 (it was also a series of made-for-TV movies). Larry once quit a teaching post at Yale because it interfered too much with his reading time—he said, "instead of spending time talking about reading, I would rather read."

Among other things, I read—voraciously at first—about reading, bookmaking, and book collecting. I decided I might collect fine press books, and an early if obvious enthusiasm along these lines was the book designer Bruce Rogers. So from Larry's tiny little Shangri-la of a bookshop on 31st Street in Georgetown I purchased a three-volume set of John Florio's translation of Montaigne, designed by Rogers. It was a magnificently well made set of books, and I swelled with pride to own it. Admiring it on my shelf, I considered that I was on my way.

There was only one little problem: the set had cost $800 or so, which at the time was a very large subset of "all the money I had." It had failed to occur to my evidently very small brain that to collect books, or at any rate books that other people already valued, required something called resources, which I did not have.

This may be why I'm such an enthusiast of putting nice things in peoples' hands for relatively little dough (is dough still slang for money, or is that just too Edward G. Robinson now? Translated into English: dosh). I always try to make sure that the things we bring you here are bargains.

My "book collection" stood at one title for some number of months while the truth wormed its way laboriously through the thick plate of my skull. Finally, when no others could join it and it began to look lonely, and then accusatory, and finally pathetic there on the shelf all alone, a large tripartite monument to my folly, I sold it back to Larry, who generously gave me all my money back. Larry was very kind—he also gave me a binder's copy of the first Irish edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which someday I will have rebound...probably just before I head for the George.

Not cheap, inexpensive
I wonder if people appreciate being able to buy top-flight signed collector prints for a mere $350, which was the amount I was instructed in photography school to sell my student prints for...way back in the 1980s.

It's not always the right move. In one long-ago print sale here on top, we were selling a print for something like $100, and I got a call from a man who really wanted one. But he had a big problem. He said he lived in a $3 million house, and he didn't have a single piece of art on his walls that cost less than $5,000, and he was very reluctant to hang a $100 print in his home. Of course I quickly offered to sell him the same print for $5,000, but, while that seemed a perfect solution to me, it did not seem so to him. We both ended up deprived on that occasion.

And another story on the same lines—when I taught high school in the '80s, I took portraits of some of my students for the yearbook, charging only $100 for expenses, which I thought was a nominal fee. But there was one girl whose mother wouldn't let her hire me. Her father was famous—if you're anywhere near my generation, you would know who he is—and the family was very wealthy. The mother simply refused to let her daughter pay $100 for her yearbook portrait. It just wasn't enough. So they hired the most fashionable society photographer in Georgetown at the time, and the girl asked me for a bunch of samples of my work, and she took my samples to the other photographer and asked her to make a portrait in the same style. So they got a portrait pretty much like one of mine, but they got to pay $1,200 for it, which was much more satisfactory to them.

So I just wanted to say, if anyone would feel more comfortable paying $1,200 for one of our current Turnley prints—more in line with what they go for in galleries—I will be most happy to try to talk Peter into accommodating you. That's how cooperative a fellow I am.

For everyone else, I hope the nice accommodating price will help you to have more than one single solitary print in your photography collection.  :-)

Mike

P.S. Regarding Bruce Rogers, Paragraphs on Printing is a fascinating window into the world of type design and book design. But it's a book I love, so I can't be objective about it.

P.P.S. Regarding Edward G. Robinson, it's not widely remembered now, but he was among Hollywood's first major art collectors. If you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, search for an article called "Hollywood's First Great Art Collector."

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Stephen Scharf: "My advice: stay away from collecting watches (if you think camera-owners suffer from GAS...). Particularly the exceptionally well-regarded-by-watchonistas German brand, Sinn (pronounced "Zinn"). Superb German quality and execution with functionally beautiful, legible design at a fraction of Swiss watch prices.

"It's very easy to become a Sinner; you've been warned!  ;-)"Picture here: my beloved Sinn 104i (photo by yours truly)."

Geoff Wittig: "I went through a phase of diligent book collecting centered on exactly the same kind of thing you did, Mike. Bruce Rogers was by common consent the most brilliant book designer in American history. He designed exquisite books ranging from very expensive limited editions to trade hardcovers that were nearly as beautiful. His goal was to carefully tailor the typeface, typesetting, page design, even the paper and the smell of the ink, to echo the message of the text, without overpowering it. I probably have about 20 Rogers-designed books in my collection.

"But it's not nearly as much fun collecting books as it used to be. Circa 1990, this meant combing through shelved and piled up books in musty little 'used and rare' bookstores, preferably in remote locations. My best finds were in small bookstores in Vermont, and they were quite affordable. All this changed when the Internet arrived. Overnight, bookstores listed their best fine books on-line; prices skyrocketed and serendipitous finds disappeared. Now it's all about the Benjamins."

David Brown: "Your story about the school portraits reminds me of trying to sell my wife's car about 10 years ago. There was really nothing wrong with it, but the dealer didn't want it, so they only offered $1,000 on trade in. Low book value was $3,500, so I decided to sell it myself. I listed it on Craigslist for $3,200, hoping for a quick sale. The only responses I got were people asking if I would take $500. I took down the ad, and drove the car myself for the summer. Then one day, on a whim, I listed it on Craigslist for $5,000. I immediately had several positive inquiries. The car was sold within hours, at full asking price. Apparently the low initial asking price had put people off. The Turnley prints are beautiful. I'm running out of wall space, but I may bite anyway. Thank you for these print sales, they are a great service to the community."

The Trick to Being a Collector

Rodger P Kingston, talking about the pictures in the "Coming Up at Christie's" post, wrote:

"As beautiful as these photographs are (and they are among my favorites), all it takes, in my opinion, is a copy of Beaumont Newhall and a whole lot of money to build a collection like this: great images reduced to being ingredients in a recipe for 'Standard Collection, Photographic Masterworks.' I looked at the catalog: not a surprise in the lot.

"Actually, it could have been a perfect gift to an institution just starting a photographic collection."

Mike replies: Rodger is a real collector. He knows.

Even though I'm not a collector myself, I know a fair amount about it. I was very lucky in this respect because I was very interested in books early in my life, and I read a number of the classic books about book collecting. They gave me a thorough grounding in the ins and outs of book collecting, ideas and principles which are easily transferable to collecting in other fields.

The main trick of collecting, unless you want to pay top dollar for everything you buy, is to choose something to collect that nobody else thinks is valuable yet.

Helmut Gernsheim, the great historian, began collecting 19th century British photography in 1945, before photography itself was considered collectible. To name just one of his great "scores," he discovered Lewis Carroll's albums of photographs of little girls, now essentially priceless, by chance in a junk shop. His huge collection now forms the core of the photographic holdings of the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas Austin.

Albert C. Barnes, a pharmaceutical company owner, started collecting in 1912, and he chose paintings in a style that wasn't yet popular. Today we call it "Impressionism," and even in a culture gone mad for art it's the most collectible and most valuable kind. His fiercely disputed collection contains, among many other things, 181 works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and 69 by Paul Cézanne. Later, he had the great good luck to sell his company in July of 1929, just before the stock market crash, which meant he was awash in cash during the Great Depression. The Barnes Collection also contains 59 works by Henri Matisse, and 46 by Pablo Picasso.

The unimaginative collector will lament that such opportunities are gone now. But that's not true. It's just that today's opportunities are unrecognized as yet. That's the fun of it—figuring out something you enjoy that other people aren't valuing yet.

Besides great imagination and your own distinct taste, here are the things you need in order to collect:

• A methodical and organized nature;
• Sufficient resources (which don't have to be enormous, of course—it depends on what you choose to collect. Rodger's collection is of vernacular photographs, such as snapshots, many of which can cost quite little money to purchase); and
• Sufficient space and facilities to store it safely and in an orderly fashion.
• A lot of energy and ongoing interest!

Am I missing anything? Maybe Rodger and other collectors in the audience can chime in.

Mike
(Thanks to Rodger)

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Kenneth Tanaka: "'Am I missing anything?' I think you've touched most of the big points, Mike.

I have not been infected with the art/photo collection virus myself but I am well acquainted with many highly accomplished collectors and have been close to the transfers of several magnificent photo collections during the past decade. And, of course, I am closely affiliated with one of the world's greatest museum collections, now over 22,000 pieces strong and growing. [Ken is unofficially but closely connected to the Art Institute of Chicago —Ed.] Here are my thoughts, some echoing yours, for what they're worth.

Collect what you like. That is, collect the type of works that you personally enjoy seeing and studying, regardless of expectations of future valuations. Every single successful collection I know has been built in just this manner. If you set out to collect photography with a primary goal of building wealth, you’re likely to be very sorry. If you are married or in a 'committed' relationship I also strongly encourage you to find a path that you can follow and equally enjoy with your partner. You’re likely to find that shared memories of your quests are more valuable than the loot you found.

Broaden your perspectives. The traditional Newhall-ish perspective on photography’s historical touchstones is (and always was) extremely limited and, today, being relegated to quaintness. Yes, you could probably still build a collection scaffolded by such a model (as Sir Elton John did). But you’re going to need an enormous budget and a very clever art consultant.

"I recommend plowing new, or at least less-traveled, ground. Of course if you fancy a forward view you can certainly find a variety of contemporary photography to purchase. Unfortunately as the art world is rapidly folding photography into 'contemporary art' some of the popular names are already becoming very expensive. But less chic contemporary names can still be found without too much trouble at accessible prices.

"If you fancy the rear-view there are two paths. First there are photographers whose work was, for various reasons, overlooked and under-exposed during their times. Some of these folks, now in their very late years or deceased, are beginning to get attention from dealers looking for new 20th century stuff to sell. Names like Fred Herzog, Marvin E. Newman, George Tice, and Evelyn Hofer come to mind although there are many others.

"The other rear-view path is to look outside the traditional American/European geographic boundaries of the Newhallian photo history. Africa and Asia also had photo histories, you know. But much of it has been overlooked by collectors and publishers until recently. That's changing with some rapidity, as work by established photographers such as Dayanita Singh and Daido Moriyama are becoming extremely popular in America and Europe. (I was recently involved in a project that helped to introduce 1960s-era studio photography from Bobo-Dioulasso into America, truly wonderful and fascinating stuff.) Collecting prints from these countries will often be a challenge, but the pain will be in the finding more than the buying.

"My own strategy: photo books."

Benjamin Marks: "I think there is one other thing: it helps if you have an overwhelming desire to own, to possess, that thing that is the next item in one's collection. My father was an art dealer and had many collectors as clients. They were all marked by a singular desire to possess that which they did not have and delight in what they did."

The Collector Effect (Happy Birthday, Edward Curtis)

Deluxe reprint of Edward Curtis's The North American Indian,
a fabulous bargain at $28,500

A recent episode (Season 2, Episode 8) of "The Grand Tour," Amazon's new reboot of the old "Top Gear," featured two rather odd cars: an exact duplicate (not replica) of a 1957 Jaguar XKSS, handmade by Jaguar, that sells for about a million pounds; and a near exact duplicate (it has modern brakes, among other things) of a 1959 Aston-Martin DB4 GT Lightweight, built by Aston Martin Works in the same Newport Pagnell factory where the original DB4 was built.

Why? Presenters Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond explain:

Jeremy: Now we should explain why Aston Martin and Jaguar have suddenly decided to start making cars from their back catalog, and really it's...well, it's secondhand values isn't it.

Richard: Well, basically, yeah. The last genuine original XKSS to sell went for over twelve million pounds.

Jeremy: Was it really twelve million.

Richard: Twelve million.

Jeremy: So anyone who buys that [indicates new/old XKSS]  for a million is getting the bargain of the century...

Richard: Yep.

Jeremy: ...And Jaguar's making more profit on that than it would from selling...

Richard: ...A hundred XE's.

Jeremy: Exactly. I wouldn't be at all surprised if other car makers don't start doing this. Ferrari, Maserati, Lambo....

And that's how one can arrive at the rather odd contention that buying a 60-year-old automobile (granted, in better than perfect condition) for a million UK pounds (about $1,400,000) amounts to "getting the bargain of the century."

Shaded Dogs
I first encountered this "Collector Effect" with vinyl records. In an era when CD had taken over and garden-variety new vinyl records were selling for $8–15 or thereabouts, a few enterprising entrepreneurs noticed that collectors were competing fiercely for original copies of famous classic records on the used market—"Shaded Dogs," original Blue Notes, etc.—and paying anywhere from $60–300 for them, or even more. So they started producing fine reissues of famous old records, lovingly reproduced, often pressed on "virgin vinyl" (as opposed to the partially recycled and adulterated vinyl commonly used in pressing plants back in the day), newly mastered from the original tapes lovingly fished out of record company vaults. The effect was the same—they could sell a new record for a higher-than-normal price, with a handsome profit margin, yet at the same time still be giving the record buyer a relative bargain. If you wanted "Saxophone Colossus" by Sonny Rollins (Prestige 7079, 1956) or Richard Strauss's "Also sprach Zarathustra" by Fritz Reiner and The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (RCA Living Stereo 1806), you had a choice—you could buy a used original for hundreds of dollars or a pristine reissue for $30 or $35.

Today, several businesses cater to record buyers, offering thousands of such reissues of famous records.

Happy 150th
And that explains why Christopher Cardozo's deluxe 150th Anniversary Custom edition of Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian can be a wonderful bargain at $28,500. (And why the more affordable Complete Reference Edition with the same content put plainer bindings is useful, but not quite as much a bargain, at its price of $5,200 until May 15th and $6,500 thereafter.) It's because single volumes of plates of the original publication sell for ten to fifty thousand dollars, and the last complete set sold went for more than $1 million. The reprint, you see, is cheap (i.e., inexpensive).

Today, Friday, February 16th, 2018, is the sesquicentennial of the birth of the hardest-working photographer in history, Edward Sheriff Curtis. Salut, sir*. You can buy the bargain books here.

Mike
(Thanks to Mattias Jennerholm)

*And don't forget the great book about him, Timothy Egan's fine Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher. I think it's quite possible that no one will ever work as hard at being a photographer ever again.

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

hugh crawford: "That's about $1,120 retail per volume and a project like this can't be that big a seller. A handful of collectors and some institutions. I would imagine that if I were in charge of a library that held an original that I would get a copy to reduce wear on the original. Seems reasonably priced in that context.

"The original Jaguar XKSS was built by taking apart unsold D-Type racing cars and rebuilding them as the XKSS. Then the whole thing ended badly when the factory and, more importantly, the raw supply of D-Types burned to the ground. All of these new-old cars are made possible because the manufacturers generated a lot of paperwork and titles for cars that were either never built or had multiple serial numbers applied to the same car. Thus the old jokes about cars where '25 were built and only 70 survive.' Anyway, the original manufacturers have titles to cars that don't exist that would be worth millions if they did, and the resources to correct that problem. For another altogether more interesting approach to the reproducing old cars, google 'pur sang argentina.'"

Mike replies: ...And "Superformance," which I believe is in South Africa. Here's a nice video about the Pur Sang.

Howard: "An original XKSS resides in Clydes Restaurant's Race Bar in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Fun Fact is that the Bar is located in the basement and the car was placed there prior to construction."

Stan B.: "It was amazing to read how he evolved over the course of his work, and how dedicated he remained to his subject matter."

Gavin McLelland: "You may like this story about the Czech record plant enjoying a profitable period on the back of the vinyl revival."

Mike replies: Reminds me of a quote from the late Ian Brightman, then the owner of Beseler: "In a down market, the last man standing makes out like a bandit."

TOP Classic: 'The Trough of No Value'

I find this a particularly poignant picture. It's preserved in the George Grantham Bain Collection at the Library of Congress; I found it on page five of Michael L. Carlebach's excellent American Photojournalism Comes of Age (one of my favorite books about photography, by the way).

It shows the photography staff of the newspaper The New York World in 1909. Or at least we can assume the man on the left and the man on the stairs are photographers, since they're shown with cameras. I direct your attention, as Michael Carlebach does, to the wall at the back of the room that also displays the clock. Know what those are? They're negatives—the newspaper's photographic archive. The hundreds of cases you see there in neatly-shelved rows contained thousands of negatives of newsworthy events, people, and places, collected at considerable expense by the paper and with great labor and sometimes risk by the men in the picture and their cohorts.

When the newspaper folded, all those negatives were thrown away.

Value fluctuates
People sometimes ask me what the best method of preserving their pictures is, and my somewhat flip but I believe trenchant answer is, "be famous." One of the problems of historical preservation is that people only tend to preserve things that are valuable. And the problem with that is that value fluctuates over time.

Most of you are computer users. Ever thrown away a perfectly good computer simply because it was old and worth nothing? Early computers are beginning to be collectible even now, but what do you think a pristine, mint-condition, working Apple 128k Macintosh, vintage 1984, will be worth in, say, 2109, or 2209? It doesn't take a great leap of imagination to think of such a thing being worth the equivalent of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. But I threw one away once.

The problem is that many kinds of objects go through a period in their potential lifespans when they don't "pencil out"—they're not worth keeping or preserving because they're not worth any money. Here's an approximate graph of the typical value of many types of objects. The x-axis is time and the y-axis is value; the horizontal line is $0.

For some objects, what pertains would more accurately be called a trough of low value, not no value—remaindered photo books and certain old cameras come to mind—because they never actually quite reach zero value. But other objects might accurately be graphed considerably below the $0 line—those would be things that are worth nothing but that require maintenance, expense, or storage space to keep and preserve. My great-grandfather's sailboat, for instance—a gorgeous 29-foot sloop made of cedar and mahogany that was originally built for Civil War General Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur. It's currently being stored at considerable annual expense by a cousin who's into historic preservation, but it's worth no money in its present unrestored condition. Graphed, I imagine it would fall well below the $0 line.

My favorite example of the Trough of No Value comes from a former acquaintance whose back room had a high, narrow shelf running all the way around it, about a foot below the ceiling. Arrayed on the shelf were dozens of kids' lunchboxes from the 1950s and '60s. He told me that not only are such lunchboxes collectible now, but that they're actually fairly hard to find. Time was, of course, when most every schoolkid had a little metal lunchbox (poor kids "brown-bagged it"). But the kids grew up, the school lunch program got started, and who wanted to keep old lunchboxes around? They weren't useful any more. They weren't worth anything. And, since they were almost all used for their intended purpose, many were damaged or worn by use (I vaguely remember owning one that was rusty and had a dent). People naturally threw them away. The "trough of no value" for lunchboxes was long and harsh. That's why they're not so common today as you might guess—because not that many made it through the trough. (By the way, the inset photo is a corner of Allen Woodall's Lunchbox Museum in Columbus, Georgia.)

Even great treasures can go through a trough of no value, too. Consider that Vincent Van Gogh used to trade finished paintings for new tubes of paint—and the art supplies merchant was doing him a favor because he took pity on him. The paintings were worthless at the time.

Craftsmanship is a preservation method
That's why "being famous" is a great way to preserve your work—because value is the #1 preservative for old objects. But want to know another? Craftsmanship. One of the great hazards of survival through time is the lack of a market and a lack of trade value, but another is simply shoddiness. (I have to chuckle whenever I read yet another description of American frontier log cabins as having been well crafted or sturdily or beautifully built. The much more likely truth is that 99.9% of frontier log cabins were horribly built—it's just that all of those fell down. The few that have survived intact were the ones that were well made. That doesn't mean all of them were.) It's not just that things that are poorly made deteriorate more readily, it's also that they signal their own worthlessness. Or, in the case of an archive of photos, they might actually hide their own worth. I have in mind making a book of my best 35mm black-and-white pictures, for instance, and I have it in my head which pictures would be included. But if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, nobody else will ever be able to extract that book out of the great mass of my hither-and-yon mess of negatives.

Sometimes, even when something has no monetary value, people will keep it just because it seems like it's too beautiful to waste. The expression people use is one I'm sure will sound familiar to you: "it seems a shame to throw it away." Well, why should it seem a shame? It's because people also value what other people value, and if something is beautifully made and carefully encased—honored, you might say—then it projects or advertises its own value: it will be obvious to people who come across it that someone—at least the person who made it!—valued it at one time, so maybe they should value it, too. Book dealers are very familiar with this, because of the frequency with which members of the public bring in beautifully bound but worthless books. (The corollary must also be true, that very valuable books are thoughtlessly discarded all the time because they don't look valuable. But that doesn't bear thinking about.)

If your work is beautifully printed and matted and housed in a clamshell box or a custom album, I think it's more likely to project value, less likely to be discarded, and more likely to make it to the far side of the dreaded Trough of No Value. Something to think about, huh?

Mike
(Graph by James Bishop)

[Ed. Note: This post was originally published eight years and a few days ago.

If you're interested in the subject of how objects survive, I can recommend a quirky but highly imaginative little book called The Same Ax, Twice by Howard Mansfield. The title came from an old farmer Howard met who boasted that he had used the same ax his whole life. Howard asked him if he hadn't ever had to replace the handle, and the farmer answered yes, the handle had been replaced three times, and the head had been replaced twice, but it was the same old ax.

The book is rather a wild ride, with a very expansive interpretation of the concept of "restoration," but it's also quite memorable.]

Original contents copyright 2009 and 2017 by Michael C. Johnston. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Gary: "When I'm not taking photographs I make and restore furniture. The antique furniture market is currently struggling in a 'double trough.' After peaking in the 1990s it has been steadily falling in value for nearly twenty years. Those very few pieces of antique furniture that can genuinely be described as 'museum quality' continue to set record auction prices, but the vast majority just grinds down in value year after year.

"Some pundits are starting to think the unthinkable, that antique furniture prices may NEVER recover. They point to the fact that in the West we're living in smaller urban spaces that struggle to accommodate the larger scale of many antiques. And they suggest that 'hygiene' factors are also at work, in a world of BMW and iPhone perfection we won't now tolerate the wonky legs, sticking drawers, and general mustiness that characterises antiques.

"Whatever the reasons, here in the UK I regularly see mid-market antique furniture that is now so cheap it is being broken up and the mahogany, walnut, and rosewood components sold to hobbyist furniture makers and luthiers."

Mike replies: That's odd and sad. I have five antique pieces of furniture, three of them family hand-me-downs, and I know the approximate provenance of four of them. And about "iPhone/BMW perfectionism," the two things I bought most recently were both reclaimed...one a table made from an old cast-iron industrial stand (original purpose unknown), and one a stool/end-table that is basically a giant oblong chunk of barn beam, refinished. It came from Montana. Perfect, it is not! And yet for what I wanted where I have it it's...well, perfect.

William Tyler: "The trough of low value is essential to the later high value. If all those old lunchboxes had been saved, none would be worth much today. The trough creates scarcity, an important component of value. The scarcity principle is also the reason for limited editions."

Make Objects

Let's say you were a nonexistent person. But what if you used existence strategies? Would that be enough to sort of make up for your nonexistence, in a sense?

You'll notice certain recursive qualities in the above question.

It has been an utter delight to follow the case of one Karl Waldmann, who doesn't exist. That hasn't stopped Waldmann, who is deceased but never lived, from not making piles of money with artwork he didn't create.

It seems Waldmann is, or was, a previously unknown Dada artist from Vienna whose works were discovered by a French journalist at a Polish flea market in Berlin.

The charming part of the story is how the art world is responding to the emerging evidence that Waldmann actually never existed and that his works are forgeries, consigned for sale across Europe by a gang of criminals.

Waldmann's Belgian gallerist, for instance, has responded by offering authentication services. I love this, but I'm unclear...is he saying that some of the works are fakes but not all of them, or is he authenticating the real fakes from fake fakes? I hope it's the latter. Because we must put our collective foot down about people faking fakes. There should be only one authentic fictitious Karl Waldmann.

The real gem comes from an institution, no less, the Kunsthaus Dresden, where Waldmann's work has been shown. The institution admitted to being troubled by the possible nonexistence of Waldmann, but added, according to Süddeutsche Zeitung, said that "it's also possible that it is a contemporary art project using fictional strategies."

I totally love that. Read it again and think about it, and watch your own head explode.

Furthermore, I'll go them one better. I think the criminals ought to immediately adopt this as their defense. That is, they should immediately claim that they are not creating forgeries for purposes of fraud, but that they are creating real fake art because the whole project is itself a contemporary art project meant as a subtle commentary on the state of the art market and the greed and willing gullibility of its various factotums and middlepersons.

Because then, watch what happens to the art itself—it passes from state to state to state like water going from solid to liquid to gas. It is art, then it becomes not-art, then it becomes art again. First it is authentic historical Dadist work by a guy nobody happens to know much about called Karl Waldmann; then it becomes fraudulent fake art cynically planted by criminals; then it becomes one of the cleverest contemporary art projects recently conceived—new work that convinced people it was old art, but only to make a point.

In that final state, if you think about it, everyone can be happy. The people who bought the art because they liked it can continue liking it; the former "criminals" can be celebrated for their daring, cutting-edge two-thousand-teens art project, which exactly mimicked forgery but wasn't; and everyone who has gained either money or artworks can keep their money and artworks without having to admit either that they were taken advantage of or that they committed a crime or an unsavory act, as the case may be. The police need not get involved. (I've failed to mention that the police are in fact involved.) Works all around, seems to me.

Fakes, forgeries and misattributions
If I can get serious for a moment—unless it's just way too late for that—I might point out that a large percentage of the art being traded as authentic on world markets probably isn't real. The Fine Arts Experts Institute of Geneva, Switzerland, analyzes artworks for authenticity using scientific methods. They charge healthy fees for doing so, and the purpose is to add value to works that stand up to their scrutiny; it's a sort of appraisal service. The head of FAEI, Yann Walther, says of the idea that 50% of the art in circulation on the world art market is fake or misattributed "is, if anything, an underestimate."

A "Karl Waldmann" work.
Photo: Museum Karl Waldmann, via Die Welt, via artnet news.

The reason for this is simple: the market needs objects. There's a strong demand for art and strong incentives on the part of the market to satisfy that demand. Even granting that Karl Waldmann is imaginary and "his" work the product of forgers, it would be nice if he were real; the market could use more attractive Dadaist works. There's nothing wrong with the impulses. Collectors would love to have the works and art dealers would love to provide them.

That certainly doesn't excuse criminal malfeasance, on any level. But it's interesting to me to imagine the feelings such work perhaps evokes on the part of hypothetical owners. What if you love to look at the piece? You would get a lot of satisfaction and enjoyment out of it. Then, if you found it was a forgery and you'd been defrauded, your feelings would be changed radically and fundamentally—the meaning of the work would now be that you were played for a chump, robbed and violated, and the work itself, you might feel, was interwoven in that betrayal—how could you now look at it and not feel bad? And yet the object itself would not have changed at all.

No matter what percentage of the art that's "out there" in the world is fake—50%, 70% (which seems to be the high end of the estimates), or even just 20% or 10% (numbers everyone seems to agree are too low)...whatever it is, it means that there are a large number of people out there who are fooling themselves. They own artworks that presumably please them, that they think are valuable, and that provide some of the gratifications and consolations of art...but only because of what they think they know about it. If they found out that what they know isn't true, their feelings would change dramatically.

I only have one conclusion here, and it's very mundane. And that is, if you want to play in the art world, you need to create objects. Objects are what the market revolves around. Objects are what are bought and sold. And the good news is, the art world really needs more objects; there apparently aren't enough already to go around. The door is open for you to step up and try to provide some of what's needed.

Mike
(Thanks to artnet news)

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Jon Orloff: "The institution got it wrong. It's not a contemporary art project using fictional strategies. It's really a fictional art project using contemporary strategies."

Rodger Kingston: "This is a fascinating post with an interesting spectrum of responses, and has personal resonance for me in a couple of ways.

"Starting in the mid 1970s, I built a large collection of 'anonymous' photographs based strictly on aesthetic and/or historic values. (See the TOP articles 'Democratic Vistas' and 'The Kingston Collection.')

"I never collected with monetary return in mind; my goal was to build an 'alternative history of photography' in hopes of changing how photography is valued in the art world. And while I clearly haven't attained this lofty goal, I have succeeded in becoming a 'Connoisseur of the Commonplace' (as I have been called), which has taught me to see the beauty in everyday things.

"As regards my own work as a photographer, I've had modest success, with numerous museum and gallery exhibitions, and I've supported myself in and around photography for over 40 years, most recently with my latest self-published book (See the TOP article 'Strong Color' and 'Searching for Edward Hopper' at the Luminous-Landscape.)

"While I've made a hand-to-mouth living in photography lo these many years, if I were judging by external values, I wonder if I'd call myself a success.

"However, going by internal values, I can't imagine a more wonderful way of making my living; my work has been my spiritual fulfillment and my play.

"Robert Frost said that he wanted to leave a few poems where they wouldn't shake loose, and also that he wanted to make sure the woodpile was a little bit higher when he left than when he arrived. That would be success enough for me."

Dave in NM: "Thank you, Mike. I've got a toothache today. Now that you've made my head hurt, the tooth doesn't feel too bad."

Kenneth Tanaka: "The subjects of art theft and forgery have become a special interest for me for the past few years, ever since I read The Gardner Heist. Since then I've read just about anything I can find on these subjects. (No, I'm not studying for a future caper.) I've not yet read much about 'Karl Waldmann' so you've now given me another cool case to pursue this summer/fall, particularly since I will be in Vienna in April!

"Estimates of fake or incorrectly attributed art works in private and museum collections generally seem overstated for shock value to me. But since there are so many strengths of verification involved across collection administrations I can only shrug and say OK.

"The degree to which an owner's enjoyment of a piece relies on price and provenance must similarly vary. I know people who bought works by famous artists, often pre-fame, that they would never sell. They love seeing them each day. Discovering that these works were fake or mis-attributed might take some shine away but I think the owners would still love them. I also know people for whom price + provenance = love. Again I can only shrug.

"Re: '...if you want to play in the art world, you need to create objects. Objects are what the market revolves around. Objects are what are bought and sold.' Yup. Bingo. Of course you don't need to 'play in the art world' to pursue and enjoy photography (or painting, or sculpture, or textile art, or...). Most of us don't. But one thing is certain: ya ain't gonna show up on Artnet searches (for example) by posting on Flickr, Tumblr, 500px, Twitter, Facebook.... And, yes indeed Mike, it starts with creating an object; namely, for us, a print.

"Does the art world 'need' more objects?  You might not reach such a conclusion if you saw some of the storage vaults of a major museum! But the art world will always find room for new objects of value."

James Bullard: "That reminds me of a movie I saw quite a few years back. A thief breaks into a studio and steals several paintings from an artist who is having trouble selling his work. The thief cons a galley into taking them as the work of an undiscovered painter who is a recluse. They sell so well that the thief tries breaking into the studio again to steal more paintings, but gets caught by the artist. The pair then collaborate to create and sell work by the fictional artist the thief made up to sell the first batch.

"A critic gets suspicious and eventually they are caught and the movie ends with them both in jail, and the artist painting in his cell because there is still demand for his work. I can't remember the name of the movie and I haven't been able to find it in web searches, but the perpetrators of the Karl Waldmann scheme may have gotten the idea from that movie."

Mike replies: Anyone know the movie?

Judith Wallerius: "I don't quite agree with the summary that the art world needs more objects of just any kind, because that void could easily be filled with countless works of unknown and/or new artists that continuously create enough to fit any taste and purse of potential buyers. Instead, the issue seems to be more that it needs more objects with an already established value, or at least objects that fit into the framework of established value without much wiggle room. Anyone not buying for enjoyment is buying to make a profit, and few are doing that by taking a gamble on someone who might be big one day. For that, the perceived and mostly settled value of an object (settled as in, while there might be discussion if it's worth a few hundred or thousand dollars more or less, there's an agreement about the fact that it is worth several of those hundreds or thousands, regardless of taste) is far more important than a debatable artistic one.

"And that's where the forgers or creators of 'unknown' art from past periods come in, to fill a void that no new-and-coming artist can fill. It wants filling with art that already carries a sticker with its 'worth,' for filing purposes."

Mark Roberts: "I recommend False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-Time Art Fakes for a fascinating look at the history of forgery and fakery in the world of art. It's surprising how much is out there—even in some major museums."

Jim: "In the late '60s I took a scientific instrument into the basement of a top art museum to test whether it could help find fakes. The first painting we analyzed which was supposed to be ~400'years old showed the white pigment being titanium oxide, not lead oxide, so it was painted in recent times—a fake!"

Michael Bearman: "This reminds me of a story about Picasso. His friend watches him paint a canvas. When Picasso finishes, the friend expresses his admiration for the work. Picasso says, 'if you like it, take it, keep it.' The friend takes it home. The next day, he realises that Picasso didn't sign the work. So he takes it back to Picasso and asks him to sign it. Picasso says, 'I can't sign that, it's not my painting. It's a fake.' His friend says, 'Are you joking? I watched you paint it yesterday. You gave it to me to keep.' Picasso says, haughtily, 'I can paint fake Picassos as well as anyone.'"

Paul Amyes: "In the 1990s an aboriginal artist by the name of Eddie Burrup came to prominence in Australia. The work was exhibited widely, including at events for indigenous artists, and it started to become widely collected.

"Trouble was Eddie Burrup did not exist. He was the creation of Elizabeth Durack, of one of the most prominent graziers and landowning families in Australia and definitely caucasian. The problem is that it was promoted that Burrup was an initiated man in his tribe and the paintings reflected that sacred knowledge, when nothing could have been further from the truth.

"Durack tried to laugh it off, the white arts community felt considerable discomfort because they had been sold a lie and bought art works which weren't of Aboriginal significance and therefore weren't as valuable as they'd been led to believe, and the Aboriginal artist community was outraged because they felt it was another case of white colonialists stealing what little was left of their culture and profiting from it."

Oops! And, Hmbl. Ed. Needs Advice

The Single Use Device; a not-very-good product shot under the fluorescents.

So I made one big mistake in the last two days. I had a Pentax 31mm Limited lens here that I listed for sale. Turns out that was a loan from a reader, Yoshi C. Yes, years ago, and I had lost track of where it had come from...and just assumed that it was mine to do with what I pleased. Fortunately, Yoshi contacted me before I made the mistake of selling his lens to someone else! It's now slated to go home again, so all is well.

Whew. Dodged that bullet. (Don't worry, John, I know the Leica M7 and 35mm Apo-Summilux belong to you.)

People aren't supposed to admit it when they do stupid things like that. But, to quote David Vestal, "I'm in the disclosure business." (That's what he would tell manufacturers as he refused to sign non-disclosure agreements. I miss David.)

End of another era
The fabled and fabulous Single Use Device sold this morning, to Tim B. in Devon, Blessed Plot/Sceptered Isle. (Closer to Ilford.) Godspeed, and I hope Tim exercises it properly. And with all this stuff going out the door, I feel my "camera accumulator" period is drawing to an end. No more happy imagining that I'm going to become a film photographer once again; no more indulging of gearhead fancies. From now on, I'm thinking I will just own the tools I need to do the work I want to do, as I used to do. (I always sensed that camera accumulation—I can't glorify myself with the term "collecting"—would be dangerous for me, not to mention hazardous for my bank account.)

But speaking of working tools, I need a little advice. Bridge cameras and small-sensor cameras are a blind spot for me, because I haven't had much use for them and don't keep up with that parish of the camera world. But I think I need some buying advice. I'm looking for a small-sensor camera that I can do product shots and closeups of small objects with, for web publishing only. Note, for instance...

...that the end of the 135mm ƒ/4 Super-Multi-Coated Takumar (this big beauty now belongs to Ned B.) is a bit out of the d-o-f. A tiny sensor would make it that much easier to get everything in focus in shots like this.

Anybody have any advice? It should have a 1/2.3", 1/1.7", or 2/3" sensor, IS, and hopefully not too slow a lens. I was looking at something like the Olympus Stylus 1. Or some flavor of Nikon 1? If anybody knows what macro and web-product shooters like, I'd be happy to get some pointers.

Re a camera reviewer not knowing about cameras, I'm reminded of a professional studio advertising photographer I once worked for. He told an amusing story about being asked, at a party, for advice about a flash. Meaning, of course, what Nikon calls "Speedlights"—a Strobist strobe, an on-camera flash unit that attaches to the hot shoe. And he had to admit to his social acquaintance that he didn't own one and had no idea how they worked, much less what to buy. His interlocutor was astonished that a professional photographer of his caliber wouldn't know about something so simple and common as an on-camera flash unit. What Peter didn't bother to explain was that he worked with flash every day and was a master of artificial light, but his tools of choice consisted of $70,000 worth of Speedotron Black Line pack-and-head equipment—what were at that time (this was the mid-'80s) known as "studio strobes"—and hundreds of pieces of light-shaping equipment, from an enormous softbox for the Quad Head to stacks of Mathews C-stands.

One day not too long from now my camera arsenal will consist of my Fuji X-T1 and three or four lenses, the iPhone for visual note-taking, and some camera as yet unnamed that stays in the basement to do TOP tabletop shots with.

My favorite camera for such product shots? You won't believe it: the Nikon D800 and 28mm ƒ/1.8G! I'd just take a picture standing way back, and crop to a tiny center section to get the subject. Even cropping radically there were still enough pixels there for the Web. But it's a little too expensive to keep a D800 around just for that!

Tabletop shot taken with the D800 and 28mm lens...

Crop way down and you've still got plenty o' pixels for the Web.  :-)

Mike
(Thanks to Yoshi)

ADDENDUM: Thanks for all the excellent suggestions, which I will start posting soon. I really should have mentioned that I don't want to use the Fuji XT-1 for tabletop because I don't want to be changing settings and lenses back and forth all the time. The "real" camera needs to be upstairs and ready to go outside; the "Web" camera needs to live downstairs and be set up to do that at a moment's notice. Of course I could use the same camera for everything if pressed, but it would be kind of a hassle just given the way I tend to work.

UPDATE: I ended up buying a used Panasonic LX7 compact, for $150, from the same reader who just bought the Konica 35mm ƒ/2 M-Hexanon from me. I'll use that for some tabletop shots and let you know how it does.

Thanks again for all the help!

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Ray Bullen: "Unless size is an issue, I'd suggest a Panasonic FZ200 as a solution to your small sensor problem. I'll point you to Graham Houghton's blog. He could almost be called Mr. FZ200!"

Mike replies: Very impressive samples. Thanks.

Jock Elliott: "Panasonic FZ200 is astonishingly versatile. Constant ƒ/2.8 from 24mm-e to 600mm-e. I have used it professionally for both web and magazine work. The pix in this article and this article were taken with its cousin, the FZ150. If you want a bigger sensor, the Panasonic Lumix LX100 works very well and sees in the dark. I carry both the FZ200 and LX100 in a shoulder bag, and I never have to change lenses."

Dana Thomas: "...Hilarious on the Pentax 31mm lens. A friend...still is...tried to sell a Nikon FM and a 50mm lens to me that he had borrowed a year earlier. 'Dude...I gave you this while yours was in repair.' 'OH!...well I guess I will have to sell it to someone else.' What are friends for if not a bit of fun?"

Dan MacDonald: "I do eBay sales of camera gear at a shop here in Seattle and we use an older Canon G10 and I've been impressed by the image quality it achieves with our small tabletop studio, as well as the small 1/1.7" sensor allowing for the kind of depth of field you're looking for. The newest version of this camera also has an ƒ/1.8–2.8 lens which is nice.

"Most of the images on this blog I shot with the G10."

Limited Edition Photographs

The whole Eggleston-Sobel imbroglio is, to my mind, simply another reason why photographers should never limit their editions. 

Imbroglio is a word I like: it's pronounced im-BRO-lee-oh, and it means "a confused heap." It's what Oliver Hardy means when he says, in no fewer than 15 Laurel and Hardy films, "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!" (He never actually says "another fine mess"—that was the title of a 1930 film.)

Whenever the subject of limited editions comes up, I'm quickly admonished that "you have to limit your editions" because dealers want you to and the art market expects you to. Well, of course they do: it's to their advantage. The practice of limiting editions exists almost exclusively to benefit the secondary market.

Actually, you don't have to do anything. You have a spine, and it's a free country. Do what you want, not what some art-world autocrat demands that you do. Act in your own best interests instead of someone else's.

Another brief digression, for a few definitions: the primary market is when the creator—the photographer who took the photograph—sells a print of it to someone. The secondary market is when that other person re-sells it to someone else.

At this point in the discussion, someone always says, "Limited editions only benefit the secondary market? No they don't. Limiting your editions helps you sell more prints, because collectors are more likely to buy prints from limited editions."

That's right. Limiting the edition size does help you sell a few more photographs—except in the case of your most popular photographs. Which are the ones that will make the lion's share of whatever money you'll ever earn from print sales. And as every photographer knows, those most popular photographs are few and rare. In those few, rare cases—when you've actually created a desirable picture lots of people want to buy—you don't need any "help" selling out the edition. People will buy them because they want them. And then they will want some more.

And therein—there in those words "and then they will want some more"—lies the rub.  The demand goes on—sustained, even after the edition has run out. It might even go up. The demand is greater than the supply. 

This is what the secondary market prizes, and why it cares. High demand + low supply = higher prices. The secondary market only profits if the prices go up as work is resold again and again.

To help this to happen, the secondary market has to make sure the supply is controlled—even if it has to be done artificially. Dead artists are mighty tractable in this way; they don't make any more prints and they don't sign any more prints. But living photographers are loose cannons. Never know what they're going to do. So living photographers are bullied into limiting their editions.

All this means to the photographer is that he or she is going to be prevented from profiting from his or her desirable photographs. His or her few, rare desirable photographs, mind you...the ones he or she doesn't have many of.

So here's how it goes. Luck, skill, and hard work pay off, and you get a really outstanding shot that lots of people might want to buy. And what happens? You're enjoined to only sell a few of them, for the sake of the secondary market. Your ability to profit from sales of prints of your photograph is limited right along with the "edition."

Why would photographers want to do this? Because they're told they have to.

Photographers should want the primary market to profit, not the secondary market. The reason is simple: that's you. You are the primary supplier for your own photographs. If you sell a print for $350 and 10 years later it sells for $10,000 on the secondary market, you don't get a piece of that $10,000*.

At this point in the discussion, somebody always says, "Wrong. Because if the prices for your older work goes up on the secondary market, it will increase the prices you can charge for your newer work." Right again. That works...for about seventy people alive in the world today. Maybe fifty. Or maybe thirty.

It doesn't work that way for most of us.

For most of us, you have to look at it from the opposite perspective. Some while ago I mentioned a classmate who took a popular photo of a couple of white cows in the fog on a country road when we were in photo school in the early '80s. She told me she's still selling prints of that picture, 30 years later! I always trot out this next fact in this argument, but that doesn't make it any less true: Ansel Adams printed more than 800 copies of "Moonrise, Hernandez," in his life, his best-selling photograph. That didn't stop it from holding the auction record for a photograph at one time.

Then consider the handful of photojournalists I've heard from in my tenure as an editor, who took one or two famous pictures in their career, but who can't profit from them because the pictures are owned by the publication they took them for. Even some of those who do own their (remember, few, rare) most desirable pictures end up fighting with their former employers over the rights.

Lee Friedlander refuses to limit his editions. Why? You'd have to ask him, but I presume it's because it's anti-democratic and inorganic, not in keeping with the true nature of the medium. And he does as well as anybody in terms of print sales, among photographers of his (considerable) stature.

I'm not objective about this subject. I resent the whole idea of limited editions. It's corrupt, and exploitative of photographers. It's also false—the grafting of a sensible idea from one medium (printmaking) on to a medium to which it does not apply.

First editions
Forget printmaking, from whence the idea of "limited editions" comes. Photographic prints are more like printed books.

Here's my suggestion: go back to first principles. An "edition" is a printing...an occasion on which a work is published in multiple. It is in that sense necessarily limited, because you don't print an unlimited number of photographs or print an unlimited run of books when you make up a batch of 'em. You don't create unlimited numbers of whatever it is you're publishing, even if you can.

If David Vestal went down to his darkroom in 1986 and printed five copies of a picture he took in Mexico and put them in a box, where they sit for decades, that's a de facto edition. The 1986 printing of that photographs is limited to five. But maybe that picture gets published in a book and suddenly becomes famous, and he quickly sells all his 1986 prints, and he prints 25 more in 2013. He sells nineteen of them and puts the other six in a box, where they will sit for some unspecified period of time. That's the 2013 edition, and it's limited to 25 prints.

Why not just formalize this? Call the 1986 prints "the first edition" and the 2013 prints "the second edition"?

Works for books.

Would Jonathan Sobel be so aggrieved in the current imbroglio if he had bought a print of "Memphis (Tricycle)" that was part of a 25-print** first edition instead of a 25-print limited edition? Would he care so much that the Egglestons decided to raise some cash years later by selling a few big inkjets as a "second edition, 2012"?

I don't think so.

So that's my recommendation. Limit your editions, sure, but do it by being rigorous about it. Print all the prints in the edition at the same time so they're identical and they can all be legitimately identified by a date or a year. Mark them as being part of that edition. Give each edition clear identifiers—size, materials, technique. Don't add any more to that edition after the fact—respect the edition's integrity. Then, if you want to, or if you ever have reason to, do another edition...in which the prints are identifiably different from those of the first edition. Call that other edition the second edition, and mark it as such, and respect its integrity as well.

Problem solved, if you ask me.

Of course, no one asks me. But you can't blame me for trying.

Mike

*Unless you live in France, if memory serves.

**I don't actually know the real number. I made up "25."

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

[Another] Mike: "As a book collector and hobbyist photographer, all of this seem to me to be completely obvious. Most of the time, in publishing, 'limted editions' are little more than a gimmick to get people to spend more money. I'll keep my first edition of The Grapes of Wrath, thank you, no matter how fancy your leather bound, smyth-sewn limited edition is."

Marco: "In Italian, imbroglio refers to a mess made on purpose to obtain something dishonestly. Like selling the Coliseum to an American tourist.  ;-) "

Alexandre Buisse: "Talk about being bullied: in France, where I am a pro, it is a legal requirement to edition your prints to 25 copies or less if you want to be considered an 'artist,' which comes with all sorts of benefits and drawbacks, like the ability to license a photograph to a client. If you refuse to, that makes you a craftsman, you have a higher sales tax, and you're only allowed to shoot weddings and sell images as physical objects to the general public. I wish I was kidding."

Geoff Wittig: "I'm not sure if the analogy with book 'editions' is quite right. Photographic prints can be produced basically on-demand, while book editions really have to be printed all at once due to the economics of a press run. Yes, there is frequently a steep price premium for older 'first editions' of books that become popular, just like there is for older photographic prints. But I regard the obsession with collecting 'first editions' of trade hardcovers completely absurd. There is generally nothing objectively special about such first editions; they're often printed on low quality (i.e., not archival or acid free) paper. The typography is generally ordinary, which is to say dreadful. The 'value' of a first edition, then, is entirely a matter of contrived scarcity rather than artistic merit. I honestly just don't understand this.

"A book that is printed as an actual, honest to goodness limited edition is a very different beast. It generally has been printed on acid-free paper chosen for very specific æsthetic goals, with typopraphy and page design intended to honor and illuminate the text. Such books are often exquisite examples of the very best the bookbinder, paper-maker, typographer and illustrator are capable of. They're actually worth owning for æsthetic, rather than pecuniary, reasons. And because of the labor-intense nature of such books, they're by definition produced in very small numbers. I guess one could regard them as the bibliographic equivalent of a hand-made dye transfer print as opposed to an offset press poster."

Nick Moore: "Don't you think most photographs sold (in the primary market) today are essentially editions of one—printed on demand rather than in a batch (or edition)? Your print sales would be notable exceptions and, of course, are predicated on the benefits of dealing with a batch run. If true, does this change your thinking about what would constitute an edition?"

Mike replies: I'm only suggesting this as a rational alternative for those who insist on editioning in the first place. Of course the sensible solution is not to edition at all; see the first paragraph.

tex andrews (partial comment): "...Although Mike makes some excellent points about who benefits in these 'limited' situations, limiting an edition is not altogether illegitimate—because the dealers actually have a legitimate stake in this.  They are after all bearing the financial burdens of their businesses, from staffing and rents to utilities, and are indeed giving the artist a value add of marketing, if they are worth their salt. Getting with a good gallery is a very important part of the making of a career—which is very different than the making of the work or developing a vision, etc."

Sobel vs. Eggleston: The Decision

Fraudulent misrepresentation, negligent misrepresentation, unjust enrichment, and promissory estoppel. Those are the bases upon which collector Jonathan Sobel sued photographer William Eggleston in April 2012.

Sobel had paid a reported $250,000 for a large (~17" wide) dye transfer print of "Memphis (Tricycle)," the famous picture that graces the cover of William Eggleston's Guide, one of the landmark American photography books of the second half of the 20th century and a seminal work of color photography. Sobel's print was supposed to be a "limited edition." When Eggleston sold a copy of the same picture—printed digitally, and considerably larger—for $578,500 at Christie's last March, Sobel was not pleased. He sued. Seems understandable.

Judge Deborah Batts of the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York, however, dismissed the suit last Thursday, writes Julia Halperin at ArtInfo. Seems the Judge agreed with Eggleston, whose representatives said the larger inkjet prints in the Christie's sale are a new expression of the work.

Bill Eggleston*. Photo by Maude Schuyler Clay

That also seems reasonable, actually. Strictly, an "edition" is a multiple printing of a photograph at one time and using one method. "Limited edition" basically means that you're printing only so many and that's that. Saying it's a limited edition is just a formalization of that reality—you might give each print a number, announce the total number, and mark the prints with some sort of identifier that makes it easier for people to tell they're from that edition. This all comes from printmaking, where many techniques technically limit the number of good copies that can be made.

The art community has long frowned on artists confusing the issue, but at the same time has long been lenient about allowing other editions—as long as they're distinct from the limited one and not likely to be confused or conflated with it.

In that sense the Judge has gone along with standard practice (insofar as there is such a thing) in this case.

Sobel, who owns 190 Egglestons, still disagrees.

He's wrong about one thing, though—he claimed that the sale of the newer inkjet prints diluted the value of his holdings. Unlikely, in our humble opinion.

Mike
(Thanks to John S Krill)

*Anyone know who took this? I spent some time searching, but have not been able to identify the photographer.

UPDATE from Hugh Crawford: "Maudie Schuyler Clay took it way back when.

"Maudie in 1979—Polaroid diptych—edition of one."

Mike replies: Thanks Hugh (and the others who replied and correctly identified Maude). I did try to email her, but have gotten no reply thus far.

She's quoted in this article talking about the portrait. (Thanks to Rodger Dicks for the latter.)

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Alan: "Working in an art gallery that sells limited edition prints, it's a familiar problem. Whilst nominally legal to release new editions of pieces at a later date in different sizes or formats, it always feels a little dishonest. Similarly, many of my clients who bought a 'rare, sold out piece' often experience upset when they see it on the wall a few years later. For my money, make as many editions as one pleases, but I feel they should all be acknowledged on the provenance of every single piece from every edition (unless of course the piece is only ever an open edition and sold as such)."

Chaitanya Patel: "For the record, I am a lawyer, albeit not in New York, and I think that legally (and in my view morally) the decision was the right one because the fact that one edition is limited, does not preclude other editions being made from the same negative.

"However, some of the responses to this post have been not about the law, but about what people feel in their bones to be right and so I'm going to chip in with what I feel instinctively about this. I haven't spent a great deal of time thinking this through, so I would appreciate robust criticism of my position if anyone strongly disagrees.

"I think there's something inherently wrong about valuing a piece of art higher because fewer other people get to see it, or get to see it in the same form. I think as a collector, if you enjoy something and buy it on that basis, you ought to be glad that others will be able to enjoy it as you did, or in a slightly different format.

"If you don't, my view is that your position is selfish and narcissistic and is built upon a foundation of denying to others a pleasure that costs you nothing.

"If your response to this is to say that the collectors' pleasure is not merely one of aesthetic appreciation, but also that he made a financial investment based on the promise of limited supply, then all I can say is fine, but he or she does that within the legal system governing these contracts, and can't complain if they haven't fully understood for what that allows in terms of future editions.

"I also think that artists shouldn't issue limited editions, but somehow I'm less annoyed at them for doing that than I am at collectors for getting annoyed when it doesn't mean very much."

Mark Roberts: "I think Sobel's goal is...exactly what he's achieving now: Great awareness of the existence of a relatively small number Eggleston prints in a now-reproducible medium (dye transfer)...and a subsequent increase in their value. Production of new, expensive Eggleston prints in inkjet media will do nothing but increase the cachet (and price) of the old dye transfer prints. Whatever Sobel is spending on this lawsuit is an investment that will pay of handsomely should he ever sell his prints. And I think he knows this perfectly well."

We Hear from Keith Davis

It's always a treat for me when we hear from one of the people we've written about. I got a comment yesterday from Keith F. Davis, the curator who's responsible for the book The Photographs of Ray K. Metzker. I've added his comment to the original review.

If you'd like to know a little more about him, here's a brief article (too brief) called "Collectors' Roundtable: Keith F. Davis on Collecting Photographs." And here's his short-take bio:

Keith F. Davis received his B.S. degree in Cinema and Photography from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale (1974), and his M.A. (1979) in the History of Art from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. He has curated more than 70 exhibitions from the Hallmark art and photography holdings—shows seen in over 300 individual  bookings in leading museums across the U.S., and in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Great Britain, France, Spain, and Switzerland. He became the founding curator of photography at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in January 2006, following the gift of the Hallmark Photographic Collection to the museum.

Curators are, to a greater or lesser extent, institutional collectors. How great a job is that? After John Szarkowski retired from the Museum of Modern Art, he was hired to curate photographs for the PaineWebber Art Collection. He used to call me every so often (I'm sure as just one of a large network of contacts) to see if I could recommend any photographs or photographers he might be interested in. I'm pleased to report that three of the photographers I recommended to him sold work to the PaineWebber collection, including one who'd never sold any prints before. (My brush with institutional collecting.)

I told Keith we'd sold 52 copies of the book through our links, but that was wrong. Actually, 52 copies have been shipped: we cleaned out Amazon's stock. Another 68 copies were ordered that haven't been shipped yet.

I'd be interested in what others think of the book, if by chance you're one of the ones who bought one, and if you've received it already.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Ken Tanaka: "As Mike opined, the book is a winner: 'Not only is it the ideal Metzker retrospective, it's an exemplary photographic monograph, with a substantial, insightful text and superb plates, presented in a robust but no-nonsense, no-pretenses manner.' I can't say it any better. Keith Davis has produced a superb retrospective on Metzker. Having seen lots of Metzker's prints I can also report that the book's plates are spot-on. If you want to get one book that neatly packages one of the great 20th century photographic artists look no further."

Larry: "I am fortunate to live a few blocks from the Nelson-Atkins Museum and have seen many exhibits curated by Keith Davis over the years. First when he was with Hallmark and more recently at the Nelson. They have all been superb. He and his staff are to be commended for the excellent exhibits they have been putting on in the new dedicated photography space in the Bloch addition at the Nelson.

"I want to alert midwest TOP readers of their current show which is a retrospective of Terry Evans. It is an amazing show and will be there through January 20th. It is well worth a trip to the Nelson. Just as important to readers not in the vicinity is the Evans book produced for the show, which is equal to the Metzker book in every way."

Just Ask

By William Schneider

I began collecting photographs back in the mid 1980s. My first print purchase was from a Very Big Name art photographer known for pioneering darkroom work in the 1960s.

I saw a photo of his on the cover of Darkroom Photography magazine in early 1986, and wanted it. I didn't know about the gallery scene or the "proper" way to purchase a print, so I just telephoned him after finding his number in the local library's collection of phone books.

The call must have caught him by surprise, and he must have sensed a naïvety in my conversation. He offered a 16x20 print to me for $300, but he said "don't tell the gallery." Apparently, they charged double that price for a print.

In another instance, I saw a documentary photo gracing the cover of a Land's End clothing catalog during Christmas, 1986. The caption inside the cover said, "Lois Holland and niece Alison Ladd share a quiet moment in Mineral Point, Wisconsin." I wrote to the company asking for more information about the photographer (the late Archie Lieberman), and they provided it. I called Archie, and he sent a print at no cost to me because I said I was a customer of Land's End, his client for that job.

My collection is admittedly hodge-podge, but I have obtained many, many prints over the years through special sales like the Turnley offer, special editions, and just plain asking the photographer directly.

It never hurts to just ask.

Bill

Bill Schneider teaches in the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University.

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Featured Comment by Ruby: "I also called a photographer, after seeing a print I liked at our local museum. It turned out the exhibit ended the next week and I was able to buy the very print they displayed, already framed and signed."

Featured Comment by Jim Richardson: "Speaking of recent connections on TOP! You realize that Archie Lieberman did the wonderful documentary book Farm Boy, right? And that Howard Chapnick (lately mentioned here by Peter Turnley) was his agent on that book. Lieberman was one of my heroes, teaching me the value of documenting simple events over time. Seeing the boy in his book grow up, get married, and start his own family was a sweet, simple, and rewarding reading experience."

A Print for Free

We're having a print sale on Sunday. You may have heard. (One reader wrote to say he's sick of hearing. Buck up, little soldier—TOP has to grind its grain, after all. That's how we keep coming to you for nothing. Begrudge us not our loaf of bread.)

On the eve of Peter Turnley's first print sale on TOP, a year and a half ago, both of us—Peter in New York, I in Wisconsin—went to bed worried. What if the sale was a bust? You never know. It would have been bitterly disappointing to sell only 40 prints—or, worse, 20, or ten.

The next day was...well, Peter described it as "really, one of the most exhilarating days of my life." Hundreds of orders came pouring in, and the sale was a resounding success. Ctein's first sale sold more in terms of numbers, but Peter's became our #1 sale in terms of earnings.

It's exciting to be a part of something like that (success is fun).

This time around, we're not so anxious—but that's allowed some other thoughts and considerations to come to the fore. You've heard me say this so many times that expressions about broken records might be coming to mind, but it's been gratifying to hear so many people tell us that our sales are the very first time they've ever bought an original photograph. One newly married couple comes to mind—I think they bought one of Charlie Cramer's beautiful prints. They said it was their first joint purchase of art as a couple. They hoped it wouldn't be their last. (That's an older married couple, in the picture. No word on whether it was their cat.)

So Peter and I got to thinking (and talking). Recently, on an unrelated matter, I sent a couple of prints to a supporter of the site and included a note that said "one to keep, one to give away!" Wouldn't it be nice if we could make it easy for you to give one of these Paris prints to one of your friends?

We can't do one-for-one—the prints just cost too much to produce. They're printed by Voya Mitrovic in Paris on premium gelatin-silver fiber-based paper; washed and flattened; signed both by Voya and Peter; Peter then flies them to New York, where they're boxed and shipped. And it all has to be done quickly. It's a lot of work.

But Peter still wants to be able to provide a print for you for free.

So here's what we're doing on Sunday. Anyone who buys three or more prints from the sale can have one more for nothing. No extra cost. Free.

Of course you can keep that last print for your own collection if you want to—we're not telling you what to do with your own property. But if you want to, we figured maybe this would make it easier for you to give one of these prints as a gift to someone important to you, maybe one of your non-photographer friends who you think might appreciate it. Or someone you know who might never see the sale here on TOP. Or maybe someone who would never consider buying original artwork for themselves, for whatever reason. Or someone you know who really wants one but can't afford $395 for one print.

This is one of the nice things about the Internet. If you think about it, what's Kickstarter? It's a way for ordinary people to become philanthropists. Oren Grad called it "micro-scale philanthropy." And that's exactly what it is. For $20 or $10 or even $1, you can contribute to causes and projects you believe in—meaningfully (believe me, it meant a lot to Carl Weese to get his summer project funded by so many generous people the other day. And 60% of his contributors arrived via TOP, so thanks for that). TOP sales, along with many other similar sources of art around the 'net, are ways for people to buy original artwork on a "micro" scale. We run these sales to make money, but doing something good along the way is a nice side-effect.

Well, anyway, I don't know how to end this. But Peter just made the final decision—he's in Cuba, and communication hasn't been easy—and I'm happy that we're actually going to do it.

Please tune in on Sunday afternoon, or Monday morning, for the sale announcement.

Mike

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The Kid Did Alright

So you remember my post about the (rare) sale of Eggleston prints at Christie's, to benefit the Eggleston Artistic Trust? Well, so I showed up at the auction with $150,000 in my pocket, fully intending to walk away with the wonderful lady on the hanging swing. That was the high end of the pre-auction estimate...that ought to have done it, right?

Alas, my cash wasn't nuthin' but trash—the lady on the swing sold for $314,500. Not bad for an inkjet print.

Here's a rare picture of Eggleston himself on the same swinging settee. Kevin Purcell sent me this...it's a screen capture from the 2006 documentary William Eggleston In the Real World. It's in the titles at the end of movie.

The famous trike picture sold for an even more impressive $578,500. The sale as a whole realized just under six million dollars. Not bad for a living photographer.

I was kidding about attending, of course. And $150,000 is more than my house is worth, and I suspect I'd better finish paying for that first. I'm not even very far along.

Stop, thief
I did have a chance to steal an Eggleston once—not a valuable one. We were doing an article on him for Camera & Darkroom, and his gallery sent us a big box of prints that turned out to be the repro prints for the book The Democratic Forest. Jim Sherwood and I went through the book and compared the repros to the originals one by one; it was surprising how far the color was off in some cases, and how much the book cropped the photos. Half an inch, sometimes. So anyway, one particular print really grabbed me—a yellow dog sleeping underneath a tree. I flirted with an illicit thought—what if I just sent the box back minus that picture? Would they notice? If they did, I could just return the picture and claim it had gotten separated from the others.

I didn't do it, of course. I would never.

Even though others have done it to me—I sent a quite valuable Charles Peterson print to American Photo once, for a show announcement, and they "lost" it. Yeah, right. I'll bet it got lost right into somebody's collection.

The person who lost it had good taste, at least. It was a beautiful print.

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.