Mary Ellen Mark shared her thoughts with me; “People are bidding on something that has no value. I thought it was a joke, so I just took a cell phone picture of a real photograph. It is easy to take a good picture and so hard, almost impossible, to take a great picture. It takes years of labor to do this well. Photography is a craft, an art, a point of view. Instagram is not meant to be fine art or a beautiful object; it is social media—a means of communication.”
via Instagrams Fetch Thousands of Dollars at 2013 Aperture Benefit Auction | Feature Shoot.
2 Comments
Does this really warrant high indignation? People go to these events with the intent of making a donation. You could put an apple pie out on a counter and get hundreds of dollars for it. Does this mean something profound for bakers and the pie market? Do shock waves ripple through the pie baking community? The same applies to arts and crafts. I’ve seen horrific paintings, photographs, woodworking, you name it, sell for far above their worth simply because there were more donors than there were objects to bid on. The promoter of this event was trying something novel and funky to drum up publicity and donations, and it clearly worked. I doubt the market for finely crafted photographs took much of a hit.
You make an excellent point.
Comments are closed for this article!