Peter Lik

Dr Croubie · Feb 7, 2015

cliveh said:
When I walk around some art galleries and see red dots for paintings/or whatever media as sold, it does make me wonder if it just hype to encourage sales.

If I were more of a bastard I'd keep a multicolour pack of those dots in my pocket when I went to galleries, and just stick them on the walls randomly

fastw · Feb 7, 2015

Looks like a very expensive self promotion. OTOH if I could do that...

BradleyK · Feb 22, 2015

Fastforward: See today's New York Times Sunday Business section for an interesting writeup (almost two pages, nonetheless) on the Mr Lik.

Darkroom317 · Feb 22, 2015

Dr Croubie said:
If I were more of a bastard I'd keep a multicolour pack of those dots in my pocket when I went to galleries, and just stick them on the walls randomly

Haha. You should. You'd be hailed as a genius

David A. Goldfarb · Feb 22, 2015

The NYT business profile:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/02/2...cipe-for-success-sell-prints-print-money.html

Dr Croubie · Feb 22, 2015

Haven't read it yet, but isn't it just a bit telling that he's in the 'business' section and not the 'arts' section?

hoffy · Feb 22, 2015

David A. Goldfarb said:
The NYT business profile:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/02/2...cipe-for-success-sell-prints-print-money.html

We have a term for this kind of bloke in Australia.

He's a wanker.

Richard S. (rich815) · Feb 22, 2015

hoffy said:
We have a term for this kind of bloke in Australia.

He's a wanker.

I think you call him a RICH wanker.

Mick Fagan · Feb 22, 2015

Dr Croubie said:
Haven't read it yet, but isn't it just a bit telling that he's in the 'business' section and not the 'arts' section?

That's because he is in business, the business of generating money.

Seems to be a success story, eventually, we will find out if that success story is real, or a facade.

Mick.

Ps: an interesting write up in that newspaper.

jjphoto · Feb 22, 2015

That's a very interesting article. It's interesting to read about the secondary market sales of Peter Lik prints. The NYT article is worth reading for that alone.

LJH · Feb 22, 2015

chacun à son goût.

There are plenty of sh!t photos on this (and others photo) site that people don't seem to complain about. Seems to be that the differentiator is that he's making loads of money, whereas your average crap photographer isn't. Seems like sour grapes are cheap and plentiful this season...

Richard S. (rich815) · Feb 22, 2015

LJH said:
chacun à son goût.

There are plenty of sh!t photos on this (and others photo) site that people don't seem to complain about. Seems to be that the differentiator is that he's making loads of money, whereas your average crap photographer isn't. Seems like sour grapes are cheap and plentiful this season...

ACP here. If I made a 1/8 of his dough I would not give a FF what everyone here or what anyone else thought of me.

hoffy · Feb 22, 2015

LJH said:
chacun à son goût.

There are plenty of sh!t photos on this (and others photo) site that people don't seem to complain about. Seems to be that the differentiator is that he's making loads of money, whereas your average crap photographer isn't. Seems like sour grapes are cheap and plentiful this season...

I'm not complaining about his photography. Not in the slightest. I actually find a lot of his work very interesting. But.....

Peter Lik is in awe of himself. When he describes his career as a fine-art photographer, he speaks with the satisfaction of a guy who has performed miracles, at the pace of a bystander who just caught a glimpse of Superman.

Im the worlds most famous photographer, most sought-after photographer, most awarded photographer,

There are plenty of other pearls of his own self importance through the article (which as others has stated, is very well written).

I stand by my comments - he's a wanker.

LJH · Feb 22, 2015

Having never met the bloke, I'm more than happy to abstain from making an opinion of him based on somebody else's opinion. I don't look to the media to guide my thoughts. Guess I'm a rare breed of cat in that regard.

Richard Man · Feb 22, 2015

Richard Sintchak (rich815) said:
ACP here. If I made a 1/8 of his dough I would not give a FF what everyone here or what anyone else thought of me.

For my photography, I would be happy with 1/1000th

pentaxuser · Feb 22, 2015

Richard Sintchak (rich815) said:
ACP here. If I made a 1/8 of his dough I would not give a FF what everyone here or what anyone else thought of me.

I may have misread your statement but it seems to suggest that you only care what we/others/the world think because you do not make an 1/8th of his dough. So our opinion of your work is inversely correlated with what it fetches on the open market. We matter or might matter simply because your work is worth relatively little. If one or two say multi-millionaire fans of your work pays $1000s for each of your prints then any comments that a large section of other photographers might make is irrelevant?

You become very good simply if a few people are willing to pay what might be a lot of money to most but may represents a relatively small amount to those few fans.

It raises interesting inferences such as: Your artistry and worthiness grows with your monetary worth. Virtue is determined by such value. The CEO of say GM is more worthy than the CEO of say Ford because his salary if greater

Our true worth to society for want of a better word is determined by our wealth

Not a criticism of you, more an attempt to look at the philosophy of the validity of "richer = better"

pentaxuser

Dr Croubie · Feb 22, 2015

I just don't think there's much point in discussing artistic or photographic merit in this thread at all.
Credit where credit is due. He's a business man, and a very very good one at that. He may not have invented this particular business model, but he's certainly refined it to a 'fine art' (sorry).
That he sells photographs is totally irrelevant to the business model.

He could have chosen anything for the particular medium, anything able to be sold in a small-ish volume as a 'limited edition'.
Cast sculptures would have worked, he could have even (literally) 'broken the mould' to prove that a limited edition was just that: limited (as it is, there's nothing besides his word that pictures won't be reprinted, although its in his business interests to stick to his 995, it works so don't muck with it).
Or furniture. Curtains. Cars. Leather cases for Leica rangefinders, or wooden upgrades of mediocre P&S digital cameras with a famous Swedish name on the side.
Anything you can claim to be 'limited-edition' and sell to Boganaires with no taste (or even those with taste, but who still seem to think it's money well spent for whatever reason).

The only reason we're talking about him on a photography forum is because that's the particular medium that this businessman chose. We should move this thread to a business marketing forum and be praising him for selling half a billion worth of stuff that cost a tiny fraction of that to produce, and leave the word 'photography' out of it...

Sirius Glass · Feb 22, 2015

For a while my hopes were high when it appeared that this thread had died a natural death. Sadly its demise was premature. Here is looking to a brighter future without this thread. After all one can hope.

Richard Man · Feb 22, 2015

Over at LFF, a similar thread comes alive again because of this NYT article. Now someone is trying to diverting it to Rockwell... AGAIN

Some other groups try to bring Sherman into the mix, but that diversion failed XD

hoffy · Feb 22, 2015

Sirius Glass said:
For a while my hopes were high when it appeared that this thread had died a natural death. Sadly its demise was premature. Here is looking to a brighter future without this thread. After all one can hope.

Then why did you actually go to the hassle of opening this thread and actually spending a few seconds to both think about and then type a reply? If you wanted it to go away, why didn't you just ignore it?

Sirius Glass · Feb 22, 2015

hoffy said:
Then why did you actually go to the hassle of opening this thread and actually spending a few seconds to both think about and then type a reply? If you wanted it to go away, why didn't you just ignore it?

Ignoring it was not working. Rather than repeatedly do something that did not work, I am now going active to help it die.

Darkroom317 · Feb 22, 2015

didjiman said:
Over at LFF, a similar thread comes alive again because of this NYT article. Now someone is trying to diverting it to Rockwell... AGAIN

Some other groups try to bring Sherman into the mix, but that diversion failed XD

Rockwell more like Kinkade. This is based on similar attitude and self aggrandizement, not their work. Thomas Kinkade marketed himself as the painter of light, a title that was given to JMW Turner, not self proclaimed.

hoffy · Feb 22, 2015

didjiman said:
Over at LFF, a similar thread comes alive again because of this NYT article. Now someone is trying to diverting it to Rockwell... AGAIN

Some other groups try to bring Sherman into the mix, but that diversion failed XD

Sherman I understand, but Rockwell???

Darkroom317 · Feb 22, 2015

hoffy said:
Sherman I understand, but Rockwell???

Rockwell is brought up because his work was popular much like Lik's is supposedly. One of the issues that some have is that Rockwell's most famous worked were mainly American propaganda. Ever since the publication of Clement Greenberg's essay on Kitsch such work has been looked down upon. However, I would not compare him to Lik, as my understanding he wasn't self absorbed to the point of Lik. Of course this could be because of the ever increasing narcissism in our society.

Richard Man · Feb 22, 2015

I think it's the "desperate to divert it to anyone else" tactic

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