Photographers: It Pays to Brand Yourself as an Artist

This photograph by Andreas Gursky sold at Christie’s last week for 4.3 million dollars. Evidently I have no taste whatsoever because this looks like envelope after envelope of the snapshots I used to take at church camp with my Kodak Instamatic, all of which are currently in an unlabeled box in my attic. It’s nice and everything, but 4.3 million dollars?? According to an unnamed source at Christies (who evidently didn’t think it was all that either), smart photographers are only creating a very limited number of copies of a particular photo and digitally altering them so that they are more like “art.” This ups the cache, ups the price, and ups their brand as an “artist.” I say power to them but you could buy your own farm with a river running through it for way less than 4.3 million dollars in my neck of the woods. I’d rather have that.