Relics of the Future is a short documentary that follows Toronto-based fine art photographer Toni Hafkenscheid as he explores the world of once-futuristic architecture through his tilt-shift lens. In the 1960′s, these buildings and monuments were considered “visions of the future;” now they stand, as one interviewee put it, “on that fence between futuristic and nostalgic.” Read more…

Having your laptop and photographs stolen usually isn’t a good thing, but for photographer Melanie Willhide, it actually helped her career move forward.
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Fine art photographer Aaron Ansarov‘s project Zooids contains beautiful, colorful, and abstract images that might look to you like something biological seen through a microscope. They’re actually macro portraits of the Portuguese Man O’ War, a jellyfish-like creature that is responsible for 10,000 documented painful stings worldwide.
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William Eggleston didn’t invent color photography, but his landmark 1976 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art gave it dignity, and began the four-decade process of acceptance by curators and collectors as an art form to rival oil painting.

Shot in 1970, “Untitled (Memphis)” – shown above – was one of the 75 photos in the show, and also featured on the cover of the catalogue. Now it’s included in a retrospective of Eggleston’s early work at the Metropolitan.
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Every few months, it seems, a fine art photograph is sold at auction for an astronomical price and then takes its place among the world’s most expensive photos. The price tags are large, but pale in comparison to the hundreds of millions of dollar shelled out for the world’s priciest paintings.

One reason for the price discrepancy may be due to the fact that art collectors are more wary of fine art photography’s long term value, and the fact that any reprints of the same images made in the future could drastically affect the value of their investments. However, a new report has found that confidence in the photography market is steadily rising, meaning we’ll likely see prices continue to balloon.
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The National Gallery in London, the world’s 4th most visited art museum, is currently holding its first major exhibition of photography, titled, “Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present.” Andrew Graham-Dixon of The Telegraph has published a review of the show, and has some strong opinions on photography’s place in the art world:

The truth is that very few photographers have ever produced images with the weight of thought and feeling found in the greatest paintings. The camera is certainly an artistic tool, and photos can certainly be works of art. But can they be works of art of the same order as paintings? Modern critical orthodoxy would say yes. But the real answer is no. Photography lacks the depth and heft, the thinking sense of touch, that painting possesses.

That is why the greatest images of the last 150 years– the images people argue about, contest, return to again and again – are not photographs but paintings

Brian Sewell over at The London Evening Standard has written up a lengthier, but equally critical, review.

Seduced by Art: Seven magazine review [The Telegraph via POTB]

Image credits: Photograph by Maisie Broadhead and painting by Thomas Gainsborough

If you’re a photo enthusiast who uses Pandora for personalized music listening, you’ll feel right at home using Art.sy. Just as Pandora uses the Music Genome Project to offer automated music recommendations, Art.sy has an Art Genome Project through which 20,000 images of art from 275 galleries and 50 museums have already been digitized, analyzed, and stored.
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Here’s an interesting 12-minute video that offers one explanation into how the world of art works. Even if you don’t agree with the philosophy and worldview described in the video, it’s still an eye-opening tour of the different things that influence and power the mysterious world of art.

We’ve seen that Google Street View imagery is capable of winning photojournalism awards, but how would the camera-equipped cars do as fine art photographers? Photographer Aaron Hobson has a fascinating gallery of fine art-style photographs found in Street View — cinematic photos that would look great blown up and exhibited on museum walls.
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The art world was abuzz last week after Andreas Gursky’s photograph Rhein II sold at auction for a ground-breaking $4.3 million. The print may be Plexiglas-mounted, signed, and gigantic (it’s nearly 12 feet wide), but the price had many people scratching their heads. Thankfully, there has been no shortage of articles written since to explain things to uncultured folk who don’t understand the astronomical prices paid for fine art.
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