“Conditions”, Andrés Marroquín Winkelmann from Meier und Müller on Vimeo.

Are luxury photography books recession-proof?
Six-figure sums are routinely paid for limited-edition photography books – and publishers tell us they’ve mined art gold

An extra-special 12 copies of the book, to be sold to people selected from an extensive waiting list, come complete with their own piece of lunar meteorite; Taschen expects the sales to be in the six-figure region. Given the current financial climate, it might seem ludicrous that these hefty, albeit beautiful, photography books should continue to sell. But they do, and in increasing numbers.

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Anxiety? Fetish? Picture-prone artists are loving themselves some process.

Sometimes, however, the boundaries get blurred. In his show at Greenberg Van Doren (730 Fifth Avenue, through October 24), Tim Davis includes a photograph taken with a large-format camera of a scratched up, graffiti-riddled fresco in Italy—reminiscent, interestingly, of Ruby’s digitally collaged images of Italian graffiti at MOMA. Both seem to circle around questions of image, inscription, history, and artifact. And yet Davis is an artist who works very much in the peripatetic, social-critique tradition of Frank; he even did a road-trip project that resulted in his own version of The Americans, titled My Life in Politics.

Villagevoice.com | Read the whole article

Paris Photo : 19th – 22nd November 2009, Carrousel du Louvre, Paris

Volkskrant | Paris Photo gaat over vintage en verkoop

Aan kwaliteit geen gebrek op Paris Photo. Maar ook geen schokkende ontdekkingen. Wat wel: Mexico als thema en veel ouds en vertrouwds. Vintage fotografie vliegt de kramen uit.

Volkskrant 2007 | Platheid overheerst Paris Photo

Bonhams is launching a standalone photographic department in a bid to grow interest in collecting photography.

BJP | Bonhams buys into photography

Forthcoming auctions and online catalogs

“In a dispassionate and scientific style, the seven hundred and one photographs inside the suitcase catalogued a city seared by a new form of warfare. The origin and purpose of the photographs were a mystery to the man who found them that night. Now, over sixty years after the bombing of Hiroshima, their story can be told”.

“Levy is a connoisseur of found objects (he’s a collector of vintage metal toys, commercial packaging and fabric sample books, among other things). Finding the photographs was the peak of his trash diving career. But the problem is that he didn’t know what to do with them. They were in terrible shape — some were stuck together, others had been hole-punched and stuffed into binders. One of his customers is an antiques dealer; she recommended putting them in archival sleeves. He did so and then he put them in storage while he concentrated on the more pressing demands of his business ventures and the necessities of putting his six children through school”.

Observatory  |Adam Harrison Levy

Christie’s e-catalogues | Photobooks – May 2009 – prices realized

Photoq | Weekend over de ‘persoonlijkheid’ van het boek

Modern art obsession | Christies Photography Book Auction.. Thursday April 10th.. With prices not to be believed

Bint photobooks on internet | Collecting photography and photobooks

Bint photobooks | De verzamelaars zijn in de war

fotostjoost | Het-fotoboek tussen grafisch werkstuk en kunstenaarsboek

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The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is threatening legal action after 3,300 images from its website were uploaded to online encyclopaedia Wikipedia.

A contributor to the popular site, Derrick Coetzee, breached English copyright laws by posting images from the gallery’s collection, the NPG said.

But photographs of works of art are not protected by copyright in the US, where Mr Coetzee and Wikipedia are based.”  Read more : BBC | Gallery in Wikipedia legal threat

Deze top-100 weegt kunstenaarsactiviteiten en –carrières volgens internationale criteria.

Ondanks de internationale criteria, staat er toch staan er heel wat kunstenaars in de top-100 die uitsluitend een nationale carrière hebben.

Er zijn ook kunstenaars met een ‘teruggetrokken’ carrière’, meestal met een tijdrovende ambachtelijke manier van werken. Zij brengen een groot gedeelte van hun leven in hun atelier door. Ze produceren maar weinig werk, exposeren bijvoorbeeld maar een keer in de drie jaar bij (dezelfde) galerie, en verkopen daar zo veel van die kleine productie dat ze niet nóg ergens een expositie kunnen houden. Toch bouwen zij gestaag aan een serieus oeuvre.

En kómt er vroeg of laat een solo-expositie in een museum, dan speelt ook het ‘onzichtbare’ deel van onze ranglijst een rol. Deze longlist, die ieder jaar groeit, telt nu meer dan 1000 kunstenaars. De plaatsen vanaf 101 zijn onzichtbaar, maar bestaan wel degelijk.

Toelichting op kunst top-100 Editie 2009, inclusief de methodiek

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www.photoq.nl | kunst-en-fotografie-volgens-elsevier/

“Collectors like nothing better than a good economic downturn”

“Getting hard numbers on how much business was done was more difficult. “Everything is anecdotal,” said Marc Spiegler, the fair’s co-director, who admits that he gathers his best market intelligence from informal conversations at the Kunsthalle beer garden. Connoisseurs revel in the art market’s illegibility. “Knowledge and effort are rewarded,” explains John Smith, an art collector and director of Bain & Company, a management consultancy. “The art market is one of the last bastions of inefficiency and that’s what makes it so fascinating.”