How Million-Dollar Frauds Turned Photo Conservation Into a Mature Science

carmendrahl writes "Photos used to be second-class citizens in the art world, not considered as prestigious as paintings or sculpture. But that changed in the 1990s. As daguerrotypes and the like started selling for millions of dollars, fakes also slipped in. Unfortunately, the art world didn't have good ways of authenticating originals. Cultural heritage researchers had to play catch-up, and quickly. Two fraud cases, one involving avant garde photographer Man Ray, turned photo conservation from a niche field into a mature science."

Comments

Every new medium is always snubbed by the snobs

[UnknownSoldier]

There are always idiots who don't understand the new medium.

Movies, Jazz, Rock, Gaming (Interactive stories).

50 - 100 years later the new medium is "recognized" as being "legitimate" expressions of the human spirit.

Re:Every new medium is always snubbed by the snobs

[the-build-chicken]

It's a bit reductionist to say that it's just because they're 'snobs'....the way it was explained to me by my art teacher is thus:

There are artists, and there are artisans...artists create art, artisans create craft...the yardstick used [in the art world] to differentiate the two is the ability to reproduce the work given the same skills, equipment and environment.

Take for example, two metal workers...both with the same training, equipment, environment and requirements...likely it will be difficult to spot too much of a great difference in the resulting product. Same goes for photography...same camera, settings, direction, time of day, physical location etc...you end up with the same shot (as this article eludes to)....very difficult to tell the difference between two works of craft produced in the same way.

However....you take two draughtsman (sketch artist, not architectural)...with the same years of experience, give them the same pencil, same paper, same light, same subject.....you get vastly different results. Same for painting.

Interestingly, before Rodin, sculpture was considered a "craft"....he showed that it wasn't.

IMHO, the jury is still out on photography...with film it had an small element of art because of the nature of the development process...with digital, it's really hard to argue that it's not a craft.

The most telling point I think is that, if you talk to a artist (classically trained painter, sculptor or draughtsman) who is also a great photographer...he/she will usually not classify his photography as art, usually as craft....in fact, even the greats like Ansel Adams used to get angry when people called his work 'art'....he saw himself as an artisan and historian more than anything.

Classically trained artists sound like snobs sometimes because of the wholesale trivialization of their hard won skills....Donald Trump calls contract negotiation an 'art', I've heard some programmers call coding an 'art'...everyone calls what they do an 'art'....go spend 10 years trying to master classical portraiture and you'll see why those classifications are just laughable on all fronts.

But that's just the view of this programmer, classically trained portrait artist, sculptor and photographer :)

Re:Every new medium is always snubbed by the snobs

[Kell Bengal]

same camera, settings, direction, time of day, physical location etc...you end up with the same shot

I can't even start with how wrong that is. Much like two bullets fired from a gun clamped in a vise will never hit exactly the same point, so too is a photograph unique. Even something as trivial as precisely how hard the photographer triggers the shutter will effect the quality of the output. And if you aren't satisfied with that, I will find you a robot that can reproduce oil paintings on canvas.
Every non-trivial arrangement of atoms in the universe is unique. Either uniqueness is sufficient (and every process can be art), or else it isn't and you need a more robust discriminator.

Re:Every new medium is always snubbed by the snobs

[Eskarel]

I can't tell if you really don't understand photography or if you're just using an absurd definition of "the same shot".

If put a camera on a tripod and electronically took a shot at 6:15:49.123 on the 1st of Jan and then another shot at 6:15:49.123 on the 2nd of Jan you won't actually get the same shot, even presuming that all other factors were identical.

Yes two shots taken at exactly the same time on exactly the same day from exactly the same place with exactly the same camera pointed in exactly the same way would be identical, but the artistry and skill in photography is being in that place at that time with the photograph framed in just that way.

By that same logic you could argue that because if someone used exactly the same paints with exactly the same brushes and made exactly the same strokes in exactly the same places they'd come up with an identical painting and so painting isn't art. Sure the artistry of the painting is a bit more obvious because the you can see that artistry, but that doesn't make the artistry of the photographer any different.

Re:Every new medium is always snubbed by the snobs

[antifoidulus]

Is that really the only objection though? Up until photography painting really served 2 different(though sometimes overlapping) purposes:
1. A visual depiction of reality(or things that at the very least look relatively realistic), for example portraits etc.
2. As an artistic medium
Now if you really look at painting as being primarily about the former, then the argument could be made that photography really isn't a "skill", you point the camera at something and hit a button and poof, you have captured reality. To those people photography certainly requires much less skill than actually painting something. However if you consider (post-photography) painting as primarily an artistic medium, one in which you can express your thoughts then photography is art in the very same way painting is art. You are looking for the best way to frame your ideas using real objects as your medium.

Re:Every new medium is always snubbed by the snobs

[zwei2stein]

50 - 100 years is about time to:

  * forget fads and kitch no-one will remember
  * filter out crap and crud withing medium or genre
  * discover enough nuances and develop artisty to level where we can appreciate works for what they are

This is all very necessary.

Take a look at any "popular" lists like "10 best movies of century" or "20 best book authors" - they will nearly always contain disproportionate amount of recent stuff which is worthless and only got there because it is still fresh in memory and talked about, but which will be completelly forgotten and left out of those lists ten years later.

There are always idiots who think that recent pop and kitch is unrecognized art. Time needs to test the art.

Re:Every new medium is always snubbed by the snobs

[sjames]

Give two people the subject and tell them go. They will choose different equipment, different times and angles. Some may apply filters or 'special effects', others won't.

Some people can take amazing photos using only a disposable camera, others will get a snapshot no matter how high end the equipment and materials.

Some classically trained artists sound like snobs because they assume that only their field of interest contains difficult to master subtleties that can only be fully appreciated through years of study.

On the other end, one man's crap sealed in a can is pretty much like another's.

Re:Every new medium is always snubbed by the snobs

[codeButcher]

Take for example, two metal workers...both with the same training, equipment, environment and requirements...likely it will be difficult to spot too much of a great difference in the resulting product. Same goes for photography...same camera, settings, direction, time of day, physical location etc...you end up with the same shot (as this article eludes to)....very difficult to tell the difference between two works of craft produced in the same way.

I might not be much of a photographer, have been looking at what some others do though. I think a lot of artistry goes into choosing the right time, position, angle, focus, f-stop,...; arranging subject(s), setting up lighting, etc. etc., to get the result that s/he envisions. Also some do a lot of (digital) post-processing these days. I've seen a lot of photographs that are just beautiful to look at. They become more than a realistic representation of a piece of reality: they tell a story to the viewer (depending on the essences that the photographer chose to show), and often different viewers see different stories. OK, so I'm sure art academics have a lot more precise terms and elaborate explanations of what I'm trying to say, but this for me makes them art, instead of a mere craft.

As an aside, photographers often also develop a distinctive style that one can learn to recognize, just as with paintings or literature, say.

OK, so once someone has done it, any monkey can come along and copy the "right angle" or distinctive lighting. Not different from painting or whatever. I don't think that's a good criterion.

And then I've seen some paintings, even sold as art, that are simply attempts at representing reality with some "artsy" medium (canvas & acrylics).

Re:Every new medium is always snubbed by the snobs

[Solandri]

There are artists, and there are artisans...artists create art, artisans create craft...the yardstick used [in the art world] to differentiate the two is the ability to reproduce the work given the same skills, equipment and environment.

Take for example, two metal workers...both with the same training, equipment, environment and requirements...likely it will be difficult to spot too much of a great difference in the resulting product. Same goes for photography...same camera, settings, direction, time of day, physical location etc...you end up with the same shot (as this article eludes to)....very difficult to tell the difference between two works of craft produced in the same way.

There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired. Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines. They had tried everything to get the machine to work but to no avail.

In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past. The engineer reluctantly took the challenge. He spent a day studying the huge machine. Finally, at the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and said, "This is where your problem is." The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges.

The engineer responded briefly: One chalk mark $1; Knowing where to put it $49,999.

It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace.

Lines drawn on paper, or light exposed to film or a sensor are simply physical manifestations, just like the chalk mark. And just like the chalk mark, the value, the art comes in knowing where to put it. Where does the person put the lines on the paper? Or for the photographer, what settings does he use on the camera, where does he point it, what time of day does he take the shot, etc.

If you're going to claim photography isn't an art, you might as well claim pianists are not musicians. With other instruments, the musician is in direct contact with the sound-generating medium (either the strings or membranes being vibrated, or the air being blown) and can shape it in nearly an infinite variety of ways. But in a piano, the contact with the strings is entirely mechanical, and the keyboard action is deliberately designed to give each note only two degrees of freedom: How quickly is the hammer moving when it hits the strings? And how long is the note held down? The hammer actually detaches from the action just before it hits the string. So now matter how expressively the pianist caresses the keys, none of that gets converted into sound. The only things that matter are velocity and duration.

Consequently, pianos only have three degrees of freedom - which key(s) you press (frequency), how fast you press it (amplitude), and how long you hold it down (duration). Much, much simpler than a camera. So simple that player pianos have been around since the 1800s. Yet even with that simplicity there is such a broad range of possible expressions that nobody would take you seriously if you tried to claim pianists weren't musicians. Likewise, cameras may be simpler, more discrete to operate than a brush and canvas, but the range of possible expressions is so broad and varied that the final result is indisputably art.

Artisans or craftsmen build things for their utility, their functionality, their usefulness. Artists create things that are pleasing to look at or listen to (and I would argue smell and taste - I know a few chefs and have watched them work, and I consider them artists). Any artist who tries to tell you otherwise is just an art snob trying to marginalize another artist's work.

Re:Every new medium is always snubbed by the snobs

[CanEHdian]

Snobs? Snobs??

Despite any rambling otherwise, this has solely to do with Investment Value. IF you want to have a MARKET in Artsy Photographs you will need to have a system that buyers and sellers believe in and have near-certainty about the merchandise.

Re:Every new medium is always snubbed by the snobs

[IndustrialComplex]

How does that make it art? It takes skill, experience, and judgement to perform surgery, quarterback a football game, or even build a house. Are any of those art?

If the intention was to create something aesthetically interesting and intended to be evaluated for aesthetic value, then yes, it is art. If the aesthetic aspect of a task was not intended for evaluation, then it isn't art.

So if you were a plastic surgeon who was simply repairing a facial injury, and your only intention was to repair the face, that isn't art. If during your surgical planning and execution you took efforts to add an additional aesthetic element which you intended to be appreciated beyond the basic goal of repairing the face, that is art.

That is wholly independent of the judgement of quality/worth of such art. But for the purposes of determining if something is art or not, the requirement is that there must be an intention to create something beyond the rote mechanics of creation/effort.

A lot of people don't find definitions which are based on human motives to be sufficient, but there is no getting around it when you are discussing aspects of human culture and expression.

Pr0n as always drives the industry

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I can't help but noticing the illustration in TFA shows a researcher analyzing... a dirty daguerreotype. Surprise surprise...

Re:Eheh... but photos are older then all those you

[Anonymous Coward]

Daguerrotypes don't have negatives, and Ansel Adams would have had something to say about "just" making limitless copies from the negative.

You clearly know nothing about the history of photography, nor about printing.

Re:Eheh... but photos are older then all those you

[sjames]

Apparently there's more to it since TFA cited a case where the prints being made by someone other than the photographer greatly devalued them.

Re:Eheh... but photos are older then all those you

[CycleMan]

Like I said ... odd. An almost artificially created rarity and hence value

Take two identical baseballs used in the same game. One was hit by a low-salaried major league baseball player into the foul zone. Another was hit by a highly-paid player into the center field bleachers for a home run. Somehow the fact of who touched -- not even touched, but used a bat to touch -- this ball, and where it went, changes its price immensely.