Re-photo

I’ll freely admit to never having heard before of Peter Lik, whose photograph “Phantom” has just sold for a world record $6.5 million. And when I went to his  web site to (as it says) ‘DISCOVER THE BEAUTY OF “PHANTOM” FOR YOURSELF‘, I have to say I was not overly impressed.

In the press release about the sale it states:

“Phantom” sold to a private collector for an unprecedented $6.5 million.  The purchase also included Lik’s masterworks “Illusion” for $2.4 million and “Eternal Moods” for $1.1 million.

“Phantom” and “Eternal Moods” are black and white representations of Lik’s iconic images “Ghost” and “Eternal Beauty.”  Lik is known for his artistic approach to landscape photography and capturing Mother Nature’s vibrant colors.  His use of black and white imagery is a rare and compelling departure from his normal style.

Looking at his site I was very much reminded of those many on-line shops I’ve browsed, perhaps in search of a new jacket or t-shirt, though there are t-shirt companies like Philosophy Football that I find rather more artistically interesting.

Of course Lik is a more than competent photographer (and has the certificates on-line to prove it), but frankly I think that anyone who pays more than two figures for one of his prints is lacking in judgement, and it is hard to disagree with anything that Jonathan Jones says in his Guardian article  “The $6.5m canyon: it’s the most expensive photograph ever – but it’s like a hackneyed poster in a posh hotel“. Where the frames are worth more than the image.

It’s interesting that Lik’s on-line biography (which fails to mention a single other photographer whose work might have inspired or influenced him) includes the following:

Peter’s images can be viewed in luxurious hotels, prominent estates, leading corporate offices and in all of his galleries around the United States.

So perhaps those ‘hackneyed posters’ were really clichéd Lik originals. And if you can read that ‘biography’ without reaching for a sick bag you have a stronger stomach than me.

In black and white, “Phantom” is perhaps slightly less tacky than “Ghost” which is the colour version, but Jones is spot on the ball when he comments ‘Today, this deliberate use of an outmoded style can only be nostalgic and affected, an “arty” special effect. We’ve all got that option in our photography software.’ Though I suspect Lik’s conversion to black and white, presumably with ‘PhaseOne‘ was a little more sophisticated than Instagram, it does I think emphasize a failure in his vision.

As Jones says “Someone has been very foolish with their money, mistaking the picturesque for high art“. It harks back an argument that was current in photography around a hundred years ago, and for most of us looking back was fairly convincingly brought to an end by the final  editions of Camera Work, begun at  devoted to the work of Paul Strand. Edward Weston struggled with the issues in his own work in the 1920s, (and wrote about them) as did others in that period, but the debate was essentially over. And of course since then we have had further movements away from the pictorial and “arty”, for example in the later work of Strand, as well as with Walker Evans, Robert Frank and more. We’ve moved too from Ansel Adams (who perhaps seldom entirely escaped the picturesque ) to Robert.

Where Jones misses the point is to condemn ‘fine art photography’ because of the foolishness of some US billionaire and the avarice of the art market. Of course this is not ‘the most valuable “fine art photograph” in history’, and an idiot or a business paying huge money for it or other pictures (whether painted or photographed) doesn’t make it anything more than the most expensive.

In a house spat, yesterday The Guardian published a riposte by Sean O’Hagan ‘Photography is art and always will be’, which also says many things it is hard to disagree with, despite the silliness of its title. Most photography plainly isn’t art and never will be. And while not quite all the names given by O’Hagan to support his argument have a high rating in my personal Pantheon and we disagree about the dividing line between artists and photographers,  he is clearly right about the irrelevance of the debate which Jones brings up and right too in his agreement over the worth of that Lik image: “It’s global capitalism – obscenely rich people with more money than sense.”

What matters in the end is not whether anything is art or photography – or in the end whether people chose to work within the photographic tradition or a wider artistic one, but vision and the ability to communicate that vision. As O’Hagan says, work that “makes you look at the world differently“.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2014 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Photo History, Photo Issues, Photographers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.