For somewhere between $15,000 to $20,000 you can buy a photograph showing the sunburn that artist Dennis Oppenheim got on Long Island beach in 1970.
According to wikipedia:
Oppenheim describes the piece as a corporeal enactment of painting, going on to state "I could feel the act of becoming red."
What type of publication is this dramatic illustration from? A true-crime magazine? A government report on urban violence? Publicity for a cop movie?
The answer is here.
Or after the jump.
More in extended >>
Somehow not quite as humorous nowadays.
Source.
John L. Johnson of Pinehurst, Washington obtained a patent for his "camera support" in 1945.
Patent No. 2,369,829. The support provided a way to conceal a camera inside a hat.
I wonder if the patent illustration was a self-portrait.
In 2012, the brothers Randy and Michael Gregg tried to raise money to produce their 'harmless hunter' or 'kill shot' gun. Though it wasn't actually a gun. It was a camera shaped like a gun.
From their Kickstarter page:
This can be used year round when game is out of season to satisfy the lust for hunting while getting you ready for the harvest season. The cross hairs will show on the photo where the shot would have been, the background will show if the shot was safe or unsafe. It will help teach gun safety by operating like a lethal hunting rifle, except, it takes pictures and fires no projectiles... Ethical shot placement and the sport of hunting are taught all in one! You will be able to post "KillShots" on a website that will come with the rifle.
They never succeeded in raising enough money. Apparently the idea appealed neither to hunters nor to wildlife photographers.
It actually sold for more than $4 million — $4,338,500, to be exact. It was taken by Andreas Gursky who titled it “Rhine II” because it shows a scene along the Rhine River. Its sale in 2011 made it (at the time) the most expensive photo in the world.
The pricetag astounded many people, since it kinda looks like a photo any amateur could and would take. Florence Waters, art critic for the Daily Telegraph,
offered this defense of it:
For all its apparent simplicity, the photograph is a statement of dedication to its craft. The late 1980s, when Gursky shot to attention, was a time when photography was first entering gallery spaces, and photographs were taking their place alongside paintings. Photography “as art”, at the time, was still brave and new, and the simplicity of this image shows a great deal of confidence in its effectiveness and potential for creating atmospheric, hyper-real scenarios that in turn teach us to see - and read - the world around us anew. The scale, attention to colour and form of his photography can be read as a deliberate challenge to painting's status as a higher art form. On top of that, Gursky’s images are extraordinary technical accomplishments, which take months to set up in advance, and require a lot of digital doctoring to get just right.
Note: It was recently brought to our attention, by a kind and attentive reader, that in our original post (way back in 2008) we referred to the photographer as Bill Woods. His actual name was Bill Wood.
Bill Wood was a commercial photographer in Fort Worth, Texas. He worked from 1937 to the early 1970s. Apparently, he was a no-nonsense photographer. He didn't intend to produce weird images, but his subject matter — middle-class America — meant that many of his images do have a surreal quality to them, like something out of a David Lynch movie.
The New York Times notes: "What is captivating and often funny is the gap between what he evidently meant to do and what he did. It appears that he meant to create reassuring images for his customers, pictures that affirmed their identities, values and world. Today, however, it looks more as if he captured feelings of absurdity, unease, alienation and grief."
His pictures include a bizarre car promotion, promising a year's supply of Kleenex with every purchase of a 1959 Pontiac. Would this have been a tempting deal, even back in 1959? How much Kleenex could a person possibly use?
...a man standing outside a store with an open sign. But what does it sell? There don't seem to be any products inside.
...and the fashionable members of the Lions Club basketball team.
The International Center of Photography, which recently hosted an exhibition of his work, has
more of his images on their site. There's also
a book of his photographs.