Photography Collection

The magazine PDN for professional photographers presents some extraordinary pictures of contest winners in the Photography Annual 2007. "From Lauren Greenfield's heart-wrenching multimedia project, 'Thin,' to Gary Schneider's hauntlingly beautiful photo story about obesity, this year's contest was a study in extremes. Whether it be apoignant social statement, such as Jan Grarup's Newsweek documentation of the devastation in Darfur, or a perfectly nutty ad campaign like Lyndon Wade's for Nestle Crunch, each image has its own identity, worthy of recognition." The website also presents photobooks by Scott Peterman, Chuck Close, Lauren Greenfield and other artists.

Photography as an art form has been shrouded in controversy for quite some time; even today the Brockhaus dictionary considers it only in a very broad sense as one of the fine arts. Where do those resentments come from that deny photography the acknowledgement as an artistic discipline like paintings or sculptures?
“Photography is a craft. Many want to turn it into an art form, but we are simple craftsman who must do their work well” remarked Henri Cartier-Bresson.
And the art theorist Charles Pawel clearly noted in the 1960s: “The artist creates reality, the photographer sees it.” 1
Back then, photography had established itself after its tender beginnings as part of Art Nouveau in styles such as Bauhaus, Dadaism and Pop Art.
Curators and gallery owners started showing an increasing interest in photographs of Edward Steichen and alike, but it was not until the 80s and 90s that a distinct market for photography originated, a sort of commercial hype.
Can photography therefore be considered an art form? Because an ever increasing number of the photographers, collectors and investors consider it to be sellable? Because photography turned into an investment object, equal to shares, businesses, real estate, ships or steel?

Naturally it is absurd today to dispute photography as an established art form; it has been viewed in museums, as part of collections and galleries for many decades now.
Scientists also see a need to be part of a visual media science discourse since we live in an era that is deeply influenced by the media, advertisement, and the internet.
Art photographers create an iconographic zeitgeist-archive. But what about the potential threat that commercialism and zeitgeist have already devoured photography as an art form?
Naturally artists want to sell their art and live off being an artist, but a market for art in this shape has never existed before. Therefore it corresponds to a need for fame, money and financial security, to manufacture photographs that conform to the laws of the market and that are sellable.
This development has nothing to do with art, but with commerce; with magazines that deal exclusively with PR-oriented art market topics and popular photographers like David LaChapelle, who imitate the aesthetics of a music video and consider an artificially created picture to be art, and see them as the movers and shakers of the scene.
The market for photography in the US has been experiencing a boom, especially in recent years. An elite group of photographers are part of this movement and are being celebrated by a media who lack the critical distance that journalists ought to have. Essentially there is a commercial system that constantly fertilizes itself and is under the influence of lobbyists who have brutal financial interests and who consider artists to be replaceable as long as they generate profit. The danger lies exactly here; that one fine day the bubble will bust like it did in the days of the New Economy. There are no indications of this development at this point in time because the growth potential of a global art market for photography is immense.


1 Charles Pawel, “Das optische Zeitalter”, Olten/ Freiburg i. Br., 1963, page 58.

Translated by Alexandra Burt

Johnson Publishing Company, Inc. (JPC) has chosen the AP Images division of the Associated Press to distribute content from EBONY and JET magazines’ extensive archive of photography. The archive is considered one of the most definitive collections of visual content depicting the lives of blacks in America and around the globe. JPC has remained the world's largest African-American-owned publishing company for more than 60 years. The first issue of its cornerstone publication, EBONY magazine, hit newsstands in 1945. Jet Magazine, the No. 1 newsweekly for African-Americans, was first published in 1951.
“Thousands of poignant images have been featured in the pages of EBONY and JET magazines, chronicling the black American experience like no other,” said Johnson Publishing Co. President and CEO Linda Johnson Rice. "We are pleased to share this wealth of visual history to remind some and to educate others about the rich contributions of blacks in America and the events that changed the face of this country and beyond." AP Images, with 3.5 million photos, is one of the world's largest collections of historical and contemporary imagery. "When you consider the depth of AP's photo archive and the breadth of EBONY and JET magazines' definitive pictorial history of black America, this distribution arrangement brings unparalleled content to the picture-buying public," said AP Images Vice President Ian Cameron. AP President and CEO Tom Curley announced the partnership at the AP Annual Meeting in New York.

Artcurial will hold a two-part photography sale, its main auction of the Spring, on Tuesday, May 15th, at 8 pm and on Wednesday, May 16th, at 2 pm. The auctions will be held at Artcurial, Hotel Dassault, 7-9 Rond-Point des Champs-Elysées, 75008, Paris, France. A printed catalogue is available for these sales and can be ordered through Artcurial. Again, the first part of the sale will be held on Saturday, Tuesday, May 15th, at 8 pm at the Artcurial facility in Paris. The auction can be previewed from Friday, May 11-Monday, May 14 from 11 am-7 pm, and on the day of the sale from 11 am-2 pm. There are only 60 lots in Part 1 of the sale-- from the early daguerreotype process to recent Adam Fuss rayograms.
The sale will begin with 14 important daguerreotypes, notably lot 13, La Lettre de l’absent, a daguerreotype by Richou, and one of the better genre scenes to come on the French market (estimated at 25000-30000 euros). Also worth noting is lot 5, a group portrait of an Alsatian family made in 1843 (estimated at 10000-12 000 euros). Also in this portion of the sale is "Le Cheval, Surprise", a very important quarter-plate daguerreotype by Louis Auguste Bisson (estimated at 20000-30000 euros). It was on display at both the Orsay Museum and at the New York Metropolitan Museum in 2003 during the important exhibition of French daguerreotypes. After a couple of important paper negatives, there are some important prints by Piot and Nègre. Other early 19th-century work includes lot 23, which is of special historical interest. This unique salt paper print by Bayard, a view of Montmartre dated 1842, is one of his first prints from a paper negative. Lot 23bis, the classic Le Gray marine, Brick au Clair de Lune, 1856, is estimated at 15000-20000 euros. The sale also includes some key autochromes, a still undervalued process, notably lot 40, a Poupée by an anonymous photographer from the Lumière brother’s circle. This haunting image is estimated at 3000-4000 euros.
From the 20th century, there are a number of top prints, including a vintage print of "Mademoiselle Anita", the iconic Doisneau photographs of a dreamy young Parisian girl. Doisneau often said it was his favorite picture. The print has a great provenance, coming from the Robert Giraud collection (Giraud was a writer and journalist, who introduced the young Doisneau to Paris' shady nightlife). The estimate is 15000-20000 euros. The second part of the sale will take place on May 16th at 2 pm, will start with the sale of an important private collection from New York. Patiently built over the last 20 years, this collection is especially strong on the first half of the 20th century, with great work from Misonne, Weston, Abbott and Edward Curtis, just to name a few of the photographers in the collection.
The rest of the sale--from lot 135 to lot 330--is a seductive mix of daguerreotypes, autochromes and prints on paper by the following artists: Abbott, Apfelbaum, Arbus, Atget, Bayard, Beard, Bodine, Baldus, Balance, Bisson Freres, Blanc Et Demilly, Boubat, Bourne, Brassaï, Cartier-Bresson, Charnay, Christenberry, Clift, De Cock, Constant, Curtis, Cuvelier, Danguy, De Meyer, Dieuzaide, Disderi, Doisneau, Du Camp, Echagüe, Eisenstaedt, Emerson, Fassbender, Fenton, Flacheron, Friedlander, Frith, Fuss, Garduno, Gruen, Halsman, Herschtritt, Hong-Oai, Hosoe, Hugo, Hujar, Kenna, Karelin, Lamb, Larsson, Laughlin-Le Gray, Man Ray, Mante & Goldschmidt, Mapplethorpe, Marey, Mayer & Pierson, Misonne, Moulin, Nadar, Naya, Negre, Orkin, Parr, Piot, Pratt, Quinet, Raymond, Rinehart, Ronis, Sabatier Blot, Stettner, Stone, Strand, Sudek, Sutcliffe, Teynard, Thomson, Vishniac, Weegee, Weston, Winogrand, Witkin and Zelma.
The catalogues for both auctions are now online at: http://www.auction.fr/cp/artcurial/ . Just go to the left section on the calendar and click on the photography auction. For catalogue information or to contact the expert for the sale, email Grégory Leroy at gleroy@artcurial.com or call +33 (0) 6 25 94 29 12, or call the general auction number at +33 (0)1 42 99 20 20. When calling from the U.S. add 011 in front and eliminate the (0).

Reuters - A record 18 000 people took off their clothes to pose for US photographic artist Spencer Tunick on Sunday in Mexico City's Zocalo square, the heart of the ancient Aztec empire. Tunick, who has raised eyebrows by staging mass nude photo shoots in cities from Dusseldorf, Germany, to Caracas, smashed his previous record of 7 000 volunteers set in 2003 in Barcelona, Spain. Directing with a megaphone, Tunick shot a series of pictures with his Mexican models simultaneously raising their arms, then lying on their backs in the square as well as another scene on a side street with volunteers arranged in the shape of an arrow. Police kept nosy onlookers away during the nippy early-morning shoot, and a no-fly zone was declared above the plaza. Participants said the turnout showed that Mexicans, at least in the capital, were becoming less prudish. "This proves that we're not such a conservative society anymore. We're freeing ourselves of taboos," one said.