This guy has gone specifically out of his way, whether he planned this shot all along and lugged all his gear there, or was driving past on the way to shoot something else and saw the view, whatever. He took the image, did whatever processing to it (could've taken hours, days, don't know), printed it out at stupidly (and expensively) big, took it to a gallery, did his pitching and got it hung up, took it to auction and convinced someone that it would be worth more in a few years than they could spend on it today.
. . . . and the fact that he is Gursky has nothing to do with that acceptance in a gallery, or future worth? See even in the beginning, it took some curator somewhere to decide on what is art, and when in that circle, those that fixate oin the fine art world start talking about what the photo means to them and how HIS images always seem to suggest the same thing, or have a certain theme to them . . the flood gates open. I know first hand how curators think and MANy of them are full of themselves, thinking they can describe for everyone else what art is. . . and those people happen to be the ones that purchase at these auctions. NOP photo should be worth that much money, because it is wattered down art . . especially since he cuts and post-processes many images to create one. Give me a photographer that manages to capture the mood and essence of a scene without manipulation, over Gursky any day . . and even if Gursky makes images without manipulating them in post, they can never be worth this much money UNLESS they are historically important, etc (collection worthy to save and protect)
Where would the rest of you have given up? I gave up at the first viewing and deleted. Someone else put it on flickr and called it the end. This guy went the whole hog, did the hours of processing, gambled a lot of printing costs, had the guts to say to someone else, "this is worth hanging in your gallery, this is worth spending a lot of money buying off me". It takes a lot of guts to get that far. Is it worth kudos? Certainly. Is it worth $5mil? To someone, it is, but then they're also gambling on what the photographer will do in future, build his name bigger, then that photo will be worth more than $5mil.
First, that's not usually how it happens at these auctions . . it is a collector that puts the images up for sale, or a collecxtor offers the photographer big bucks for them before hand. Secondly, it does not take guts to go to a gallery and offer one of your photos since you are already in the fine art scene with a previous world record money photo ( YES I DO understand your point though, but it does not apply here). Like I said before, it is all about his name recognition, and not about the actual image ( flickr example). Hey, I like the image, it's nice and reminds me of one of my panoramas I took a long time ago, and I have NOTHING against the photographer. . .
I am against the art scene and thier BS pretentious egos who pretend to get in front of an image at a fine art gallery and spewt BS about what the picture is saying . . and sometimes you get to hear the photographers BS, but the less he says, the better . . sionce it is, afterall, a manipulated photo cut from images of the same scene, which does not take ARTISTRY to manipulate or create . . no matter what you want the final image to convey to peoples imagination.
edit:
btw,
c-law,I DO VALUE this image. I LOVE IT. Honest. That's not the point though
I DID have a littel run in with a curator, and got to see first hand how much some don't deserve the job, so this story just makes me want to bring out the point abouit the art world and what drives it. It does seem that I am worked up haha, but not really . . just annoyed a bit.
BTW, I NEED TO ADD:
that when I went against this curator, it was in defense of other photographers I didn't even know, and not for my benefit. I witnessed the curator make a BIG mistake in judgement on a photo/photographer, and I asked this curator to explain herself . . . I even told her that my photos are even NOT up to par with many of the images I saw there, even though I worked for hrs on mine in post or with lighting. So, I mention this to let you guys know what I am about. . . and understand me more.
