Here's his latest photo that sold for a near record $2.48 million just a few days ago. I wanted to post this on APUG but the images was digitally maipulated before being printed on the Lambda or Chomira.

http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/newswire/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003466018

Regards, Art.

The first time I saw this picture was on the cover of Harper's Magazine a few years ago and I couldn't get my head across how so much detail could be captured. It's as if I didn't believe the fact that the printing press of the magazine itself could handle that much detail.

By the way, I'm curious about what the buyers buy when they buy a photo. Do they acquire the copyright, or are they simply buying the material object? If the former, I can understand the high price; if the latter, I would say that's a tad excessive.

I saw the left hand one of these in Tate Britain this summer and was very impressed indeed. The impact it has in terms of vast size and quality so you can get up very close and see minute detail and then standing back being drawn into the scene was quite unlike a photo I have seen before.

The other images by different photographers were very mediocre (to my taste anyway) which further heightened the quality of his picture.

I was taken by the original viewpoint and idea behind the image.

Thanks for bringing this up Art.

The first time I saw this picture was on the cover of Harper's Magazine a few years ago and I couldn't get my head across how so much detail could be captured. It's as if I didn't believe the fact that the printing press of the magazine itself could handle that much detail.

By the way, I'm curious about what the buyers buy when they buy a photo. Do they acquire the copyright, or are they simply buying the material object? If the former, I can understand the high price; if the latter, I would say that's a tad excessive.

Its the latter in that the artist keeps the rights to the image. Depending upon what the print is made on it may only be good for a generation to boot.

Its the latter in that the artist keeps the rights to the image. Depending upon what the print is made on it may only be good for a generation to boot.

That's seriously bad: for that price you should be able to control who gets to use the picture. Is it the same with painting, i.e. that the estate or the artist retains copyright while the buyer only owns the pretty canvas?

Granted, it may not be always desirable or even possible to give away copyright. A vintage print is a nice collectible in a way, but it's not the work itself.

I think with paintings and photo's there is a limit to the copyright (maybe 90years from the artist death -- we'd need a lawyer) and with old paintings the owner can own the copyright to the reproduction. As the museum controls whether or not an article can be photogrpahed and therefore would have copyright the image via the photographic copyright.

Some guessing going on here maybe someone who actually knows what they are talking about will chime in.

The thing I know about copyright is that in the late 90s the laws were changed retroactively, so that works who had just fallen into the public domain like Ulysses were suddenly not anymore, and that brought a whole academic/publishing industry to a halt because Joyce's grandson wasn't feeling like playing nice.

I know that in my (old) part of the world the artist retains copyright on the work. You buy it but not the copyright. The only change to this is if the work is comisioned, then the copyright (generaly) goes to the comisioner of the work.

Suggest renaming the thread "Let's talk about copyright and how dear this picture is"

Shame, because the images are really strong and deserve comment. Should any of us manage to gain success; the very same copyright rules will apply to ourselves. What's the big deal?

I didn't say that the copyright laws were unfair, I simply said that the deal is a rotten one if you buy a print from a major living artist at that price, given that you own nothing more than the artefact.

A vintage print like the Steichen one is something different because it is rarer, the negative may have been lost, it may be impossible to reproduce, it has acquired all sorts of different values over time, and functions therefore in a different situation of offer and demand than a modern print. The same thing goes for a painting.

I don't think artists should sell their copyright, but buying a 2-million$ print is for me akin to buying a 2-million$ CD. The publishing rights to a good hundred Beatles songs acquired by Jacko cost him only 47 millions in comparison. He does not own the copyright, but he sure got more than a recording of them, and he gets quarters each time they are played commercially or covered.

I just got sidetracked from the aesthetics discussion by the price, but let's come back to the real stuff now...

I quite like that sort of big, detailed photograph -- working as window onto a scene of rampant, marked-down (in this case) commercialism. We walk through and by this stuff every day, but we don't notice. We filter it all out as noise and clutter. Reminds me of a hideously obsessive installation piece I saw in Helsinki's Kiasma museum of modern art a few years ago, which stopped me in my tracks for at least half an hour. A huge table, terraced, pink. Covered in hundreds and hundreds of pink plastic objects, everything ranging from Barbie dolls to dildos to ... well, just about anything and everything that has been made of pink plastic over the last fifty years. Standing and lying in serried ranks. It was utterly fascinating. Obsession verging on hallucination verging on mental illness. But whose? The creator's? The makers of all the objects? The absurdity and wastefulness of it all was... hilarious and sad. It was a smack of pink dildo right between the eyes. Gursky's picture works this seam too, I think -- would like to see it someday. Over two million, wow, the buyer must have a huge wall and a taste for the commercial -- don't know that I would want to have a permanent discount dimension in my house.

Sorry to hold the original post discussion up but:
I have been trying to get my head around this issue for a few years now.
Simply stated, a RA4 colour print being sold for mega bucks to me is a raw deal for potential buyers because the buyer may not be aware of the very limited shelf life of the piece they are buying.
For Example Jeff Wall sold a piece last year for about $1million dollars, this got me thinking as I knew it was a cibachrome trans print and I have the only other large ciba machine in Canada. The other one is Jeffs.
Upon further investigation of his work I realized that he has only produced a limited number of images for sale.
Cibachrome is one of the only colour substrates that in dark storage is permanent, and will not fade.
Bingo- I would guess with the purchase of a Jeff Wall original, the buyer will recieve backup prints that would be kept in darkstorage and safe, only to be brought out when the first/second/third/ copy has gone bad.
I should point out here that I only think this is what Jeff Wall is doing and if I am right I think he has worked out the perfect solution and has found a brilliant solution.Limited edition of one with backups printed at the exact same time by the artist himself.
MVH has pointed out a valid point regarding the ownership of the copyright of such a massive investment in any artists work. If I was going to purchase something for insane dollars I would want to own it.
Can you imagine all the chaos that will occur within our life time when recent collectors of colour RA4 work wake up to find there prize / trophy invesments no longer shimmer with brilliant colour, but are a cyan/magenta blob of colour no longer resembling their original purchase.





I didn't say that the copyright laws were unfair, I simply said that the deal is a rotten one if you buy a print from a major living artist at that price, given that you own nothing more than the artefact.

A vintage print like the Steichen one is something different because it is rarer, the negative may have been lost, it may be impossible to reproduce, it has acquired all sorts of different values over time, and functions therefore in a different situation of offer and demand than a modern print. The same thing goes for a painting.

I don't think artists should sell their copyright, but buying a 2-million$ print is for me akin to buying a 2-million$ CD. The publishing rights to a good hundred Beatles songs acquired by Jacko cost him only 47 millions in comparison. He does not own the copyright, but he sure got more than a recording of them, and he gets quarters each time they are played commercially or covered.

I just got sidetracked from the aesthetics discussion by the price, but let's come back to the real stuff now...

I've just drunk most of a very nice bottle of white wine so please forgive me if this isn't perfect but......

do you really think Gursky got that money, me thinks not, the originals probably went for a couple of thousand but this is a collectors market not an original artist/seller market, he's probably lucky if he even gets some of the paltry kick back that has been so fiercely fought for here in europe as regards the original artist getting a (tiny) share of any resale value his/her work may attain, do you guys in the states have a similiar thing

note to budding artists, never give over your copyright unless properly recompensed and please please PLEASE avoid royalty free

chin chin and hic

Just about anything color will fade with time, so people who collect pen and ink drawings, pastels, tapestries, watercolors, works on paper in general, maps, illuminated manuscripts, and color photographs need to think about conservation and limiting display time. I suspect that anyone making this kind of investment, whether a museum, corporation, or individual, has consultants assisting them with display and conservation.

Wow , I thought I had killed this thread, I have made a quite few very large murals in my time . When done properly they are magnificant. The detail if captured correctly is what is so amazing and the impact of larger than live detail*certain images* if very compelling.
Ed Burtynskys prints have this quality , I have seen quite a few of them up close and they truly are mind blowing compared to the book.
I have never been fortunate enough to see a Gursky print live,I hope to see one some day.

Gursky's mural-sized prints are impressive in person. I've seen a few at the Tate Modern in London.

On the one hand he's using large format to capture fine detail on the micro level, but he also seems to be doing some digital compositing as a compositional tool to juxtapose swatches of color on the macro level.