Placing value on original artwork is complicated enough, but valuing the photographic print presents even greater challenges. From the exact same negative, a photographer can create a print within about two years (“vintage”), print it much later than the image was made (“printed later”), supervise...
You know how it feels when you encounter something new and it changes the way you see things? I recently made such a discovery: the Stella Photography Collective. This tightly-knit group of twelve Chicago-based women artists, who formed in 2008 for disciplined monthly critiques, has mounted a superb...
My recent visits to the expansive “John Singer Sargent Watercolors” exhibit at MFA, Boston confirmed what a consummate artist Sargent was, developing exceptional skill with watercolors after a career spent in oil painting. In this later work, Sargent experimented successfully with Impressionism,...
This keeps happening to me: I receive notice for a photography show that looks like it might be interesting, but I can’t tell for sure. So I go to check it out, something about the work really grabs me and I have an “aha!” moment. This used to catch me off-guard, but not anymore. That […]
How does the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM, Salem, MA) approach today’s international photography scene? Using its current exhibition of Toshio Shibata’s landscape photography as a backdrop, PEM’s Curator of Photography, Phillip Prodger, led a group discussion and tour during a recent “Collectors...
Lately, I’ve attended a bunch of photography shows, especially the group shows that seem to herald summertime. Looking at so much fine art in a short timespan caused me to notice something that I hadn’t discerned consciously before, something that doesn’t make complete sense to me. More and more...
Great news! Photography has come of age; it is legitimately art. How can we be sure? The New York Times says so. In a front-page story in their special “Museums” section on Thursday, March 21, 2013, (“The Lens Rises in Stature” by Carol Vogel), the Times has tracked down and interviewed...
Vintage Print Mania
In this series of articles, I have asked museum curators, gallery owners and photography collectors to offer their opinions on the relative importance and value of different types of photographic prints. In my last article, it seemed abundantly clear that, as Jason Landry of Panopticon Gallery in Boston...