Peter Lik

DREW WILEY said:

Why would anyone intelligent believe anything Lik says?

Click to expand...

Same argument can easily be made in relation to all the bitterness you've written in relation to Lik.

If you've never had a chat with then bloke, then you're relying on somebody else's interpretation and editing of what he said - in other words, to continue the court reference, much of what you've written is based on HEARSAY. What a precarious way of developing your opinion...

I like this one better!

Is "bloke" a synonym for "jerk"? I don't need hearsay. All I need to do (and have done) is walk into one of his galleries to smell a skunk!
I don't know what the Aussie equivalent to a skunk is, but it doesn't exactly represent perfume. My guide is my eyes, ears, and common
sense. ... And experience. I've seen the same ole tourist trap marketing schemes over and over again. "The Next Picasso": do you know how many times I've heard that one? Fifteen dollar posters sold for five thousand dollars apiece by some spectacularly brilliant famous artist, who nobody can even remember five years later. Same slick sales techniques geared to suckers. But maybe discussing someone like Lik is not even relevant to this forum, since, strictly speaking, he's not even an analog photographer. I long suspected him of employing kindergartner's on LSD to do his Fauxtoshop colorizing.

... And I'm also basing this on his own "faux" press release, which downright reeks with BS. It's not as if this all originated with some objective independent source! He walks into one of the most popular scenic canyons anywhere, covered with footprints, throws some fine
dust or talcum powder into the air (as has an assistant do it, along with crowd control), take a clever shot, but hardly remarkable among the suite of many many pictures taken of the same place, then colorizes the whole thing red, and ALLEGES that someone on this planet is insane enough to spend real money on the idiotic ploy, so that he can sucker tourist into getting their own copy of the same incredibly value image at 5% of the original price. Old hat. That marketing trick has been done many times before.

There doesn't seem to be an emoticon for "mouth open in amazement" so I'll just say ... You really need to get a sense of proportion, because otherwise you're going to burst a blood vessel

Perhaps Peter Lik is the present day AA?

Michael R 1974 said:

That doesn't make any sense.

Click to expand...

Why not? Similar subject and large prices.

Why do I need anyone else's notion of a "sense of proportion"? I've never had high blood pressure, and one more used car salesman out there doesn't make much difference. I never worry about what these posers are doing when I'm in my own darkroom. Someone colorblind hack like Peter Lik has zero influence on my own work, much less on what I am thinking about most of the time. But this is a forum where opinions about such things are apparently fair game; otherwise, this thread wouldn't even exist. I could care less about him. I just pity anyone naive enough to take someone like that as either an artistic or business role model. At a more basic level, his images physically and literally nauseate me. It's difficult to understand why anyone can go certain places just to butcher any resemblance to reality for the sake of making a fast buck artificial stereotype, at the expense of all the beauty really there. Just plain blind to it. The real light in nature in overwhelming more beautiful than any of these phony abominations that people like this market. Spend some time in the high Sierra for a lifetime like I have. Put away your camera, shelve your mercenary mentality, and just look, spend quality time to soak it in. It shouldn't take long to figure out why Peter Lik has a lot more in common with Bozo the clown and his loud costumes than with AA !

Drew - you need to relax, breath deep, be here now .. Peter Lik is seeming to haunt you like that image of his... I wish I had some of his marketing smarts and some of his energy.


Deep breath.... you are from the west coast , I thought you guys were chilled out there.

cliveh said:

Why not? Similar subject

Click to expand...

Rocks and trees?

and large prices.

Click to expand...

Ah, here's where it falls apart. The prices of AA originals are determined in the secondary market and are paid between knowledgeable collectors, not artificially inflated by influencing ignorant tourists with highly questionable sales tactics in a high pressured environment.

pbromaghin said:

Rocks and trees?



Ah, here's where it falls apart. The prices of AA originals are determined in the secondary market and are paid between knowledgeable collectors, not artificially inflated by influencing ignorant tourists with highly questionable sales tactics in a high pressured environment.

Click to expand...

Are you sure about that?

cliveh said:

Are you sure about that?

Click to expand...

Just where would the latter be happening in regard to AA originals?

pbromaghin said:

Rocks and trees?



Ah, here's where it falls apart. The prices of AA originals are determined in the secondary market and are paid between knowledgeable collectors, not artificially inflated by influencing ignorant tourists with highly questionable sales tactics in a high pressured environment.

Click to expand...

How do you know that Peter Lik prices are not paid by knowledgeable collectors?

Anybody that knows anything about this recognizes that fact, Cliveh. Maybe time to get out and look at some prints and read a little basic
photo history, which incidentally, will never even mention anyone with the last name of Lik. And to clarify something for you, Bob... Sorry,
I might work in Berkeley, but I'm not a West Coast mellow hippie, never was. I'm still a mountain man at heart, and we folk tend to take
insults to the land personally. There's a bonding to that kind of light and beauty. Don't get me talking about what I think of developers with their malls and subdivisions paving over the landscape. People like AA spent their whole life trying to protect the kind of beauty that people like Lik obviously have utter materialistic contempt for. Why protect anything if you can just fabricate it at whim in Fauxtoshop?

30 compressions, 2 breaths.

Drew, what is it that differentiates your photographic process from Liks?

Let me reply to Cliveh first. Extravagant claims require exceptional proof. Nobody can "prove" that Bigfoot and Elvis are not flying around on some UFO together somewhere. But logically and reasonably, the burden of proof would lie on whoever claims to have witnessed this, wouldn't it? But this is a case where the so-called press release was generated by Lik himself, and where any access to the fact has lawyers standing in front of it. That alone makes the whole story rather fishy. Or it could even be a straw purchase generated by Lik himself, out of his own pocket and right back in. Now lets look at the other half. He claims it sold for thus and thus based on its exceptional artistic merit. But if, hypothetically, somebody did drop this kind of money, they might just have wanted some piece of splashy decor and
not even cared about either alleged value or permanence. Conspicuous consumption, money to waste. I see this kind of behavior frequently among the locally mega-wealthy. Taste or no taste, whatever. They'll spend two or three million dollars on a room, then tear it down a few weeks later and start over, just because they didn't like some little detail. They spend hundreds of thousands on a few deck chairs, then haul them to the dump the next season, literally. A three million dollar paint job on a flimsy drywall kitchen ceiling? You betcha. They got it, they spend it.

OK - Dinesh - from the positive standpoint (you've heard enough of my negative perspective already - everybody has) - my philosophical
approach to photography is NOT to market stereotypes of what people think is supposed to be appealing in nature, but to try to photograph and print things in such a manner as to bring them into the perception of beauty they normally wouldn't ever notice themselves. Yes, sometimes this is something on grand scale, but more often requires some real contemplation). The print should lead them in, and involve
them for months and years, and keep rewarding, until they finally understand why I took it. Let's put it another way. I'm the world's harshest critic of my own work. If I can stand one of my own prints up on the wall for more than a few month, I consider it a relative success. But I will openly admit that I feel continuity with the whole West Coast school of emphasizing fine printmaking. How can one communicate precisely if they don't even have a fine-tuned instrument. I cut my teeth on color printing before I even attempted black and white, but now I do both. I could care less about fame and fortune. It is nice to generate some extra cash from time to time. Large format
shooting and printing isn't cheap by any means, and yeah, I've had a few brief moments in the sun, so to speak, my deserved five minutes
of fame. I have a "been there, done that, so what" attitude toward that kind of thing. What I do want to accomplish is to live in the light,
the subtleties of natural evanescent natural light and beauty, uncover hidden details, maybe help others to see them. Many many times I
get people walking up curious and ask to look under the darkcloth of my 8x10. It takes them a bit to get accustomed to the dim upside-down image. But then, suddenly, there's a revelation: "Why didn't I see that". Well, they wouldn't have unless I have framed it for them,
first with my groundglass, then in a picture frame. That is an utterly different approach, both as vision and craft, than just hunting for a
background for a marketable stereotype, and then making some amateurish inkjet of it, expensive only because it's huge and properly
mounted for that kind of application. And it's about respect for the subject matter, not about slathering it with fluorescent finger paint just
to make it more appealing to interior decorators of some Scarface movie set. (Sorry, I'm getting sarcastic again). More later, perhaps...
perhaps not. But this is what I'm after - not to put down someone just because of who they are - but to agitate a contrast in the purpose
for all this. There is nothing wrong with just going out and doing whatever for fun, however. Photography is like that. But here we're dealing
with pretensions to art. I don't even like the term "art" in a photographic context. But as a marketing term, it certainly exists, and is certainly abused from time to time.

... end of day. Let me put it this way. I could care less. What someone like this does, does not affect me. But because they've gotten into
everyone's face in terms of their claims to landscape photography greatness, they do serve as a convenient illustration for me - a lesson in
contrast - to what photography is not, and therefore what it can be - not necessarily my way, but according to actually cultivating personal
vision with due respect to what is in front the lens. This is a radically different approach from the "gotcha" hold your attention for fifteen
seconds mentality of advertising photography using something splashy but shallow. Otherwise, I wouldn't even make the fuss. Believe me,
no need for 30 compressions, 2 breaths. There is a bit of method to my madness.

Mainecoonmaniac said:

I work in the art department of a university in California. I've seen how much money and effort that goes into art training. Most aspiring artist can't stop with an undergraduate degree if they want to be seriously considered by galleries and museums. I see a dozen or so MFA students enter the program and get into huge debt. There's a colleague that work in the sculpture shop that has a BA and and MA in art from a university across the causeway. Now he's applied for and have gotten in to the MFA program here. I told him he was nuts spending all that money. He told me that he'll teach undergrads while he works on his MFA and attends his classes tuition free for 2 years. A lot of very talented people have passed through here and if they're lucky, they might get into galleries and possibly get a faculty position at some college and university. I've never seen a more motivated and starving lot. I'm ambivalent about the art world with famous artist like Jeff Koontz and Damien hirst.

Click to expand...

In part of the world the art academy traininig was free. It did not alter the prices of those who later were sucessful...

In the US as well as many other countries, artists are pushing for royalties on resale based on increasing value in the art market for their works (Droit de Suite). But what about the reverse for those artists such as Peter Lik whose values are artificially inflated thru marketing schemes? Wonder if Lik would accept such a challenge (partial/total refund), which would make his work more attractive to investor/collectors?

doughowk said:

In the US as well as many other countries, artists are pushing for royalties on resale based on increasing value in the art market for their works (Droit de Suite). But what about the reverse for those artists such as Peter Lik whose values are artificially inflated thru marketing schemes? Wonder if Lik would accept such a challenge (partial/total refund), which would make his work more attractive to investor/collectors?

Click to expand...

Isn't art it artificially inflated through marketing schemes?

The difference between "traditional" galleries and Lik galleries is he merely represents himself. He puts up the storefront.

In the end all art is marketed to whomever wishes to spend the money to own it. Supply and demand.

DREW WILEY said:

... end of day. Let me put it this way. I could care less.

Click to expand...

Drew, are you sure?

I'm getting a Captain Ahab vibe here.

Maybe it's me.

Apply that challenge to every artist struggling today and I doubt many would pass the test.


This thread on Mr Lik and the one on Large Format on Mr Lik are very long, negative debate.

Somewhere here or on LFP the statement was made, about how a Mercedes off the lot drops in price.. A friend of mine had a custom McClaren car made to fit a very expensive car. When it arrived he got in it and did not like the way he had to struggle to get into his new car... Immediately he sold it back to the company and lost $100,000.
In my humble little world I found this to be an impossible notion.

But if you start to think about this more , how many photographic artists, myself included would be up to purchasing back the work we sold years ago. I truly believe
the main reason one should buy photography is to enjoy it on the wall, I also believe that those with cameras making images should put their own images on their walls and enjoy them.
As a print maker I have a vested interest in this position, but over the last 40 years this simple conclusion is what I tell my clients each and every day.. Put it on the wall and enjoy.


If you are into investments then there are accredited photographic dealers able to show you work that has passed the test of time and is increasing in value. I encourage
you to buy and support this industry.

Mr Lik is obviously a hard worker, has made a good living from his passion in photography, where he ends up in the grand scheme of things, time will tell.

doughowk said:

In the US as well as many other countries, artists are pushing for royalties on resale based on increasing value in the art market for their works (Droit de Suite). But what about the reverse for those artists such as Peter Lik whose values are artificially inflated thru marketing schemes? Wonder if Lik would accept such a challenge (partial/total refund), which would make his work more attractive to investor/collectors?

Click to expand...

Blansky. Hi. I'm one of those people who gets repeatedly approached by those who want to learn how to make huge stunning large format
color prints thinking they'll get instantly rich. I'm perfectly willing to accommodate a rare student from time to time who has a germ of vision in them. No, I don't want them to see things like I do, but just to have serious personal potential that just needs a bit of catalyst to their craft itself. So it's time to set off a big smoke bomb an alert people that if they even remotely see people like Lik or Kinkade as role models, please don't bother me. You're colorblind and have no taste to begin with. Go sell black velvet Elvis rugs on a highway turnout somewhere. You'll do better. I'm interesting in seeing things, not substituting something grossly artificial just because it matches the drapes
and sofa in some McMasion. Let the interior decorators have that line of business. If someone happens to like one of my own prints above
a sofa, fine. But that's not why I made it. In terms of ethics, for the kinds of "alleged" money involved, somebody could buy a serious real
painting as opposed to some giant inkjet that's going to fade out soon enough in all that inevitable UV. For the single reason these things are incapable of holding value. With respect to artistic recognition, none of Lik's work had ever has any recognition at all. Never will. Why? Well, if someone doesn't instantly recognize that, they probably never will. You either see or you don't. I actually met a little man with a
lot of money to spend on art who came to this country from Taiwan to invest. What did he leave with? Black velvet naked lady rugs. Literally.