Who owns Mike Disfarmer's photographs?

[warden]

Enjoy.



https://www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/who-owns-mike-disfarmers-photographs

 

[Alex Benjamin]

I did.

Great story. Thanks.

 

[Don_ih]

Interesting and complicated. It's unlikely those glass plates and the associated photos would have been worth anything if a different person had bought them. They could have just as easily ended up in landfill.

 

[cramej]

I just don't get it. Is this all because of some weird fascination that coastal people have with seeing how the (in their minds) backwoods, uneducated hillbillies looked and lived? Someone saw an opportunity for profit by hyping up this 'undiscovered mysterious recluse' photographer and selling the idea to wannabe art 'collectors'? They're (mostly) deadpan portraits of regular people - the same thing thousands of other photographers were producing at the time. Just people directly in front of a gray background staring at the camera. SMH

 

[Don_ih]

I just don't get it. Is this all because of some weird fascination that coastal people have with seeing how the (in their minds) backwoods, uneducated hillbillies looked and lived? Someone saw an opportunity for profit by hyping up this 'undiscovered mysterious recluse' photographer and selling the idea to wannabe art 'collectors'? They're (mostly) deadpan portraits of regular people - the same thing thousands of other photographers were producing at the time. Just people directly in front of a gray background staring at the camera. SMH

I wouldn't say the photos are not compelling, though. There is something interesting about the carelessness of the posing with the care people took to present themselves for photo day. They don't look like 80's studio portraits, for example - there's no light-of-god above giving them a halo. They stop short of looking like horror-movie set dressing.... Yeah, I don't know why they got so much attention, either. Mostly a collector thing, is my guess. Maybe the fact that what was available were reprints of negatives made the originals that much more desirable.

 

[warden]

For those interested there was a good documentary on him a while back.

https://www.amazon.com/Disfarmer-Mi...ld=1&keywords=disfarmer&qid=1626226683&sr=8-5

...but it costs four bucks from Amazon. Worth it, I think.

But if you're down to your last few dollars I'd recommend spending it here rather than on Disfarmer, for take-your-breath-away analog beauty.

 

[Mark Minard]

I'd never heard of him until tonight when I read this article; somehow I completely missed the book that was published about him in 1976 and his turn as a "sudden cause célèbre in the photo world," as the article describes. Favorite quote from the piece: “By what logic are photographs preserved in Arkansas homes properly understood as lost and thus in need of being ‘recovered’ for redistribution to wealthier homes in other places?” Sharing it here because I'm sure many of you will enjoy it.

Who Owns Mike Disfarmer’s Photographs? | The New Yorker

 

[MattKing]

Threads merged.

 

[Mark Minard]

Threads merged.

Thanks! Sorry didn't see the earlier post.

 

[removed account4]

there was a great movie about Disfarmer on Netflix last year, was well made and pretty amazing!
what's also amazing is the glass plates were preserved. John Garo, the person who taught karsh portrait making
and was in his own right, one of the greatest portrait photographers of his time, .. his life's work / thousands of glass negatives
were vanished when he died, and I think ( maybe I am confused ) Atget's negatives were saved from certain vanishing in a trash bin as well...
and having seen the movie HUGO. we all know what happened to one of the greatest film maker of all timer's ( George Méliès ) films?
melted down for shoes...

 

[Don_ih]

“By what logic are photographs preserved in Arkansas homes properly understood as lost and thus in need of being ‘recovered’ for redistribution to wealthier homes in other places?”

The logic is actually simple, though. Being kept as a family photo is not the same as being considered art and there is no audience for a work that is not considered art. So, something that might be considered culturally significant can end up being tossed in a trash bag when its owner dies. The value of a family photo is tied to its relevance to a very small group of people and that value easily disappears once that relevance is no longer apparent. A photo as an artwork or cultural artifact, though, is valuable in its own right. Yes, it does make people money. But the photos end up in the hands of people who want to preserve them and the image is more likely to reach an audience.

Of course, once the owners know that the photos are valuable beyond just being family photos, they can do their best to preserve them and sell them for their current market value. But that really amounts to the same thing: wealthier people will eventually pay for the photos and remove them from the Arkansas homes.

 

[jvo]

of the many photographers on photrio many have done good work, and few have an excellent body of work. the reality is once many of us have gone to the great darkroom in the sky, our negatives will likely be, put on a closet shelf by the next generation, then dumped in the trash by the succeeding generation.

John, you were right, it almost happened to Atget' negatives, except for Berenice Abbot.

if our images aren't widely disseminated now, it's unlikely they will be when we meet the master printer.

 

[btaylor]

Yea, it’s kinda strange. I was going through my parents photos after all us kids had left home, they traveled a lot in their later years. A lot of pictures of friends they made in their travels which meant nothing to us, we didn’t know who any of these people were. Tossed them all. Unfortunately, Dad would not sit down and tell me who the people were in the old historical family photos but I kept them. Who knows what my kids will do with them when I am gone. Unless I get serious about my “body of work,” my work will end up in the bin. I hope they realize some cash when they liquidate my gear- don’t throw it away!

 

[removed account4]

John, you were right, it almost happened to Atget' negatives, except for Berenice Abbot.

I thought so, but I wasn't sure if it was true or something I remembered wrong ... thanks jvo !

 

[pbromaghin]

There was a story a few years ago about a guy who found a whole pile of glass negatives under the porch of a house he bought. The same kind of photos as these, they were made by the town photographer who had lived there a few decades before. The guy had contact prints made and organized a big party where anybody who found one of their ancestor's photo could take the print and plate home with them.

 

[tnp651]

Does art have intrinsic value or is it a product of culture? This is actually a difficulty question. Vincent Van Gogh only sold one painting in his life, to his brother. Did his other paintings have artistic value before he was discovered by curators? How could his contemporaries have missed the value we so clearly see? Art styles go in and out of vogue, and their prices reflect that. And I'm struck by how often an artist's death increases the value of his/her work. How could that be true if fine art is intrinsically valuable?

Who created the value of Mike Disfarmer's photos? You could argue that it was those who saw artistic merit in it and promoted it to the elite art world. Without their effort, Disfarmer's heirs would have inherited a bunch of glass of no particular value. Could they have promoted his work and made Disfarmer's photos famous? I doubt it.

 

[tnp651]

Yea, it’s kinda strange. I was going through my parents photos after all us kids had left home, they traveled a lot in their later years. A lot of pictures of friends they made in their travels which meant nothing to us, we didn’t know who any of these people were. Tossed them all. Unfortunately, Dad would not sit down and tell me who the people were in the old historical family photos but I kept them. Who knows what my kids will do with them when I am gone. Unless I get serious about my “body of work,” my work will end up in the bin. I hope they realize some cash when they liquidate my gear- don’t throw it away!

I've been scanning and captioning family photos while folks are still around who know who's in them. I put the captions in the EXIF space of each photo so it's intrinsically tied to it. i recommend that.

 

[Fujicaman1957]

Frankly, I think David Deal is a ambulance chaser. I seriously doubt great nieces and nephews had all that much contact with a man who was known as a recluse and loner.

 

[warden]

Frankly, I think David Deal is a ambulance chaser. I seriously doubt great nieces and nephews had all that much contact with a man who was known as a recluse and loner.

Of course he's an ambulance chaser. He's carved out a nice little niche for himself and he will exploit it as long as he can. That's not to say his work is without merit, but it's not surprising that the same opportunist is mentioned in the VM case and this one too.

 

[removed account4]

Frankly, I think David Deal is a ambulance chaser. I seriously doubt great nieces and nephews had all that much contact with a man who was known as a recluse and loner.

Why does it matter if Disfarmer's family made no contact with him? Copyright is transferred to blood relatives, that's the way copyright works. The sticking point might be that Disfarmer didn't register the work with the US Copyright Office in Washington DC, nor did he send faxsimilie reproductions (proofs) of the original works to himself with a date stamp and unopened envelope ( until the last IDK 20-30 years it was a way to prove authorship and was valid in a court of law / used to be known as The Poorman's Copyright ). One has neither a legal leg to stand on, or a door frame to lean against or a seat to sit in if works in question are not registered with the copyright office to prove authorship.

 

[Louis Nargi]

Thank You I'll watch later