In the spirit of winter here in Canada, I thought I’d share this lovely vintage photograph of the Niagara Falls in winter taken by Alexander Henderson in the late 1870s. Currently at the Art Gallery of Ontario, this work is an albumen print, and appears to be in fairly good condition (although there seems to be some physical damage in the form of scratches in the bottom section).
We now live in a digital era. While artists have always been at the forefront of new media, and incorporating contemporary ideas into their practices, the art world and more specifically art markets are slow to respond. Well new media artists are now receiving critical acclaim and digital works are increasingly making an impact in the art world (as they should!), but how about the actual art market itself? Enter the website s[edition], a revolutionary way to collect and trade art. While purchasing art online is nothing new, this website functions as an online market for purely digital art, and features limited edition works by acclaimed artists such as Damien Hirst, Shepard Fairey, Tracey Emin, and Bill Viola to name a few. These digital works are created by the artists specifically for sale in the s[edition] marketplace, with some pieces going for as little as $8 and some as much as $800. A revolutionary idea indeed! A work by Damien Hirst going for $12 can be owned by anyone, providing an unprecedented level of access to these artists that is usually the domain of the elite. Is this the future of the art market?
There seems to be many flaws with the idea, after all if the work is to remain purely digital then what is it that you are actually purchasing? This is where the idea becomes quite novel. Each work you purchase is added to your virtual vault, where you can download and upload to any digital device. Your artwork also comes with a digital certificate of authenticity signed by the artist and stating all of the details of your purchase including the edition. This becomes important later after the edition has sold out and you can then sell and trade for higher prices, all within the virtual trading market of the online platform. With virtual worlds and marketplaces becoming immensely popular, this is an idea that could easily take off.
At first I was skeptical, but even I have to admit the design and approach is well executed. The immediacy of the transaction and subsequent ownership of a piece of artwork by a renowned artist such as Bill Viola or Fairey, combined with the stylish and user-friendly approach makes buying a piece of digital art a rewarding experience. I now own three works, a Hirst, a Fairey and a Collishaw, all of which can be instantly accessed on my digital device and shared with friends.
The concept brings important questions to light, what qualifies as authentic and unique in the age of digital technology and does the lack of materiality affect your desire to collect and pay for art?
Image via Wikipedia
While conducting an inventory of the AGO‘s Eisenstaedt prints the other day, I was reminded about how much I enjoy his photography and the influence he had in American popular culture through his iconic Life Magazine images. The first time I really began to appreciate Eisenstaedt’s body of work was at the AGO’s Ansel Adams/ Alfred Eisenstaedt show, held in 2006-2007. Although I was quite familiar with Adams’ images (really who isn’t?), I had only a passing knowledge of Eisenstaedt’s. The exhibition brought out some excellent prints such as his work in the Alpine retreat St. Moritz in the early 1930s, as well as other interesting examples of his inter-war photographs of life in Germany during the 1930s – a foreshadowed period of European history.
Alfred Eisenstaedt was born in Germany in 1898, and moved to Berlin with his family in 1906, and served in the military during WWI where he was injured. Shortly after he became a photojournalist and by 1929 he had enough success to become a full-time photographer. He captured key events in Germany during the early 1930s, including a meeting between Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Italy, 1933. By 1935, Germany had become a hostile place for the jewish photographer, and like many other in the arts communities of Germany, Eisenstaedt emigrated to the United States, settling in New York. He became part of an artistic community of immigrants from Eastern Europe that escaped from the growing hostility in Germany to the United States. From 1936 to 1972, Eisenstaedt worked as a photographer for Life magazine. His photos of news events and celebrities, such as Dagmar, Sophia Loren and Ernest Hemingway, appeared on 90 Life covers.
The Art Gallery of Ontario has an extensive collection of Eisenstaedt prints, spanning a broad section of his career. Here are some iconic images sourced from the incredible Google Life Archive that I still enjoy, even after seeing them so many times!
From the St. Moritz series in 1932:
In August, 1945, Eisenstaedt created his most famous photograph, what would become an iconic American image, an American sailor kissing a young woman in Times Square upon his return from the war. I found the frame sequence for this famous image at the Google Life Photo Archive, a great resource for American cultural history.
Welcome to Foto pHix! This blog is intended to share my knowledge and passion for the broad subject of cultural heritage, the arts and more specifically that of photography. I recently completed my Masters in Photographic Preservation and Collections Management at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario, and I enjoy learning about the many uses of photography as a contemporary form of communication as well as its cultural history. I would like this blog to be a platform to discuss current exhibitions, artists, as well as ongoing research into the subject of photography, including its many histories & cultural contexts. As with most blogs, it is a work in progress, and that is what is so great about blogs – there is no final goal, it is in the journey and community – so feel free to join in the discussion!
Along with working at the Art Gallery of Ontario, I have my own consultation practice specializing in the care and management of photographic collections and I also occasionally focus on developing my own photography, which I have been practicing since I was given my first 35 mm film camera at the age of 13. To learn more about my consultation services or my photography, check out the links below.
Consultation for the Care & Management of Photo Collections: http://juliennepascoe.com/
My Photo Blog: http://the-occasionalphotographer.com/
I had the priviledge of meeting the very talented photographer Eamon Mac Mahon at the CONTACT Photography Festival in 2007. I am excited to see his latest body of work commissioned by The Walrus (“Amazon of the North“) and currently at Bau-Xi Gallery in the exhibition “Out of the Woods“. This project documents the importance of Canada’s fragile Boreal Forest, our “Amazon of the North”, through monumental and sublime images. Here are some excerpts:
“Stretching from Newfoundland to the Yukon, the boreal forest is our Amazon. It acts as the lungs of the world, our largest terrestrial carbon storehouse. “
“The boreal forest contains 1.5 million lakes and 80 percent of the world’s unfrozen fresh water.”
“The boreal forest is full of wildlife, with reptiles and amphibians (forty-six species of each), mammals (152) and birds (383). In all, twenty-three species are currently endangered, another sixteen are designated as threatened, and sixty-five are considered vulnerable. The fate of their home — and of our boreal forest — rests squarely in our hands: the Canadian public owns 94 percent of it. “
If you get a chance – I highly recommend checking out the exhibition (on until Oct. 22) or picking up a copy of The Walrus Magazine (November 2011 edition)
As someone who works in the Museum industry, specifically focused on collections information, I am always searching for creative and highly interactive ways for creating access to the world’s museum collections. I have been looking into Google’s lastest venture, the Google Art Project, an exciting concept that presents detailed views of art work from the top museums. Using the View the Artwork, you can easy access high res. images of hand-selected works from significant museums, even zooming into full detail of the applied brushstrokes. Furthermore, by selecting the ‘Explore the Museum’ feature you can select the desired institution and conduct a virtual 3-d exploration of each gallery, using an interactive floor plan or your own personal ‘walkabout’. As you meander through each gallery, you can then select works on the walls, and go into further examination of each artwork. This is not really a unique or novel concept, but the highly interactive and easy to use presentation of this site makes it a pure joy to visit a virtual museum – something I have not seen created to this level. No surprise really given the fact that it was Google who is behind this project!
A blog with an interesting concept, using vintage photographs and superimposing them on the physical sites they were once taken. A photo within a photo…. but there is more to this than just an fun twist on creating an image. The site takes its name from creating a direct address to the original photograph- Dear Photograph, a message written to the actual vintage photograph, of the memory it creates and even more so, the nostalgia for a world with film and tactile memories. Quite poetic:
“But I find Mr. Jones’s original conceit even more interesting: The messages on the site weren’t meant to be written to the people in the photos, but to the photographs themselves. These are messages to the message in the bottle, a thank-you note to a form of record-keeping that has changed beyond recognition. Sentiment for the past; sentiment for the ways we used to capture it: It’s a killer cocktail.” (Globe and Mail)
http://dearphotograph.com/
I’ve been meaning to post a link to this Times of India article, written last summer. The article discusses the current situation of the Bourne and Shepherd studio, the oldest photography studio in the world, and still in operation. A fire tore through the inventory of negatives in 1991, and the studio’s current owner Jayant Gandhi is currently trying to piece together the vast archive of the studio through the various Bourne collections around the world. An attempt to establish the studio as a heritage building is underway.
On now at the Art Gallery of Ontario, is an excellent show about the work of a recently discovered photographer, Abel Boulineau, whose images conjure up romantic scenes of the French countryside around the turn of the twentieth century. While highlighting these poetic glimpses into French rural life, the exhibition also discusses the behind the scenes research that took place at the AGO by Vanessa Fleet that revealed the true author of this extensive body of work. I was fortunate to have been working at the AGO while Vanessa was unravelling the mystery of Boulineau and am excited to see the results of her hard work revealed to the public.
