jaymaisel

Every Sunday, we bring together a collection of easy reading articles from analytical to how-to to photo-features in no particular order that did not make our regular daily coverage. Enjoy!

In 1966, photographer Jay Maisel spent $102,000 buying a 6-floor, 35,000-square-foot, 72-room building in New York City that would become his home and studio for the next half-century. In 2015, he sold the building for $55 million. Now a new documentary film is offering an inside look at the artist's final days inside the one-of-a-kind space.

Back in 1966, renowned photographer Jay Maisel purchased a giant 6-floor, 35,000-square-foot, 72-room building at 190 Bowery in Manhattan for $102,000. The former NYC bank became his family's home for the next half century, and the purchase has been described as possibly "the greatest real estate coup of all time".

Here's why: in late 2014, Maisel sold the valuable property to real estate investor Aby Rosen for a whopping $55 million.

Photographer Jay Maisel has spent the past five decades living, working and exhibiting his work in the iconic building at 190 Bowery in Manhattan that he calls home. A home which, according to a report by Crain’s, is up for sale on RFR Realty. Details, however, are scarce as both Maisel and RFR are keeping pretty quiet.

Andy Baio has some experience with copyright infringement, especially where iconic photographs are concerned. In case you didn't read our previous coverage on the matter, his story goes something like this: in 2009, he put together an 8-bit version of Miles Davis' album "Kind of Blue" called "Kind of Bloop," and for the cover art he had a friend create a pixel-art version of Jay Maisel's famous cover photo.

Maisel wound up suing Baio for over $100,000 for the infringement, and despite an offer for free representation, potential court costs still forced Baio to settle out of court for $32,500. Baio wound up writing a long blog post about the matter, and now, a couple of years later, he's expanded on that post in the above talk he gave at Creative Mornings in Portland.

Jay Maisel is a photographic legend who is known primarily for two things: his amazing photography, including the shot on the cover of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue; and the lower Manhattan mansion he bought in 1966 for only $102K (a purchase that has been called "the greatest real estate coup of all time").

This short documentary tells you a little bit about both. But mostly, it contains phenomenal photography, followed by phenomenal insight, followed by more phenomenal photography. It's hard not to find everything Maisel says inspiring. (Warning: the video does contain a few curse words).

In 2009 Andy Baio of Waxy.org -- founder of Upcoming.org and former CTO of Kickstarter -- created Kind of Bloop, an 8-bit tribute album to the best-selling jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. While Baio meticulously licensed all the music he used to create the album, he released a pixelated version of the original album cover (top, second from left) without licensing it, believing it was different and low-res enough to be considered fair use. He was then sued by the photographer, Jay Maisel, who "felt violated to find his image of Miles Davis, one of his most well-known and highly-regarded images, had been pixellated [...]".