August 2004 Archives

I'm a big fan of digital photography and digital printing — if that's the medium the artist chooses to express his or her vision. But when I noticed that digital copies of some of Walker Evans' most famous images are being offered for sale at around $1,500, it makes me question the value of such a thing. Here's one of five images being offered as a "limited edition" of 300 each by Martson Hill Editions

Maira Kalman, "Blue Wall/Red Hair" (2004)/Julie Saul Gallery

Alec Soth, "New Orleans, Louisiana" (2003)

I was pleasantly surprised to see this cool illustration of one of Alec Soth's photos in the August 2 issue of The New Yorker. But then I was appalled to realize that neither The New Yorker nor the illustrator credited Soth as the originator of the image.

When I asked Alec Soth about it, he wrote back:

"The New Yorker did call and ask for permission regarding the Kalman
illustration. I said it was okay. But it would have been nice to have
received a little credit. Oh well."

What an easy-going, good-natured guy.

The photographs in Alec Soth's beautiful book, "Sleeping by the Mississippi," disturb me and fascinate me in a way that Diane Arbus' work may have done to many people in the 1970's. The sense of uncomfortable voyeurism, or the freak-show nature of the subject matter, creates real tension with the sublime technical transcription of these characters and their everyday surroundings.

The fact that I continue to think about them, and that I can envision the pictures without having them in front of me, attests to their haunting quality.

I'm interested to know how other people respond to this work.