Nudes on eBay

Art by Georgia O'Keefe

I would really like to take a break from the day job.  That will require, however, that I sell some photographs, a daunting prospect.  So commonplace that it has become cliché, to sell a piece of art for a significant sum of money the artist must do two things: First, he must create art and then he must die.

I am at work on stage one, but am not willing to go to step two quite yet.

Actually, I prefer Stieglitz’s definition of art.  He said to Georgia O’Keefe, “It isn’t art until somebody buys it.” At least that is what Stieglitz, as portrayed by Jeremy Irons in the biopic of Georgia O’Keefe that recently aired on Lifetime, says to her. If you saw it, you got a pretty good idea of why O’Keefe refused to live with Stieglitz and moved to Taos. The move wasn’t just for her art, it was also for her sanity.  Stieglitz was a good photographer and a great marketer of art but a lousy husband.

So, if it isn’t art until somebody pays me for it, I had better sell something.  To that end, I have begun researching the market for fine art nudes in landscapes and landscapes.

Over the weekend I had a go at eBay.  I can tell you now — from first hand experience — that most of the photographs in the  “Fine Art Nude” category are neither “fine” nor “art.”  In fact, they are awful.  Most are priced at under $10.00 and are way over priced at that.  I left the eBay site convinced that there ought to be a law prohibiting anybody from tripping a shutter while a nude is in front of the camera unless that person has first passed both an IQ test and a basic composition test.

Tallulah Bankhead once remarked, “ They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze.  They should photograph me through linoleum.”  Those guys on Ebay — and the photographers were all guys — shouldn’t be allowed to photograph linoleum, let alone a nude.

I admit that I was bored out of my mind by page four of the search and quit looking after page five, so there might be a decent nude in there somewhere but it will take a better man than me to find it.

Scratch Ebay.

 

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eBay wasn’t a complete bust though.  I’ve always wanted a rangefinder camera for backpacking.  So I bought a Contax G2 with two  incomparable Zeiss lenses.  If you don’t know about G2’s, here is a review.

Ruth Bernhard Photos in Art Show

Faithful readers — there is at least one, I think — will know that I am a great admirer of the work of Ruth Bernhard. Here is my earlier post about her. I am always casting about, looking for a reason to post another of her photos. I found an excuse just today when I discovered a show of modern photography at the Harn Museum at the University of Florida. According to the museum’s website, they are showing:

215 works by 77 international 20th century Modernist photographers including multiple works by masters such as Ansel Adams, Weegee, Edward Weston, Walker Evans and Ruth Bernhard, as well as less familiar innovators Jan Saudek, James Nachtwey and Marion Post-Wolcott.

The show is on now and runs until January 6, 2008. I am certain it will be worth the time to see if you live in the vicinity or will be traveling there.

Good. Now that the excuse is out of the way. . .

That is enough for one day. Stay tuned. I am certain to find more reasons for more of her photographs.

Gender

This is from an interview with Gloria Steinem:

Q: Do you see the world through the prism of gender?

A: No, the world looks at me through the prism of gender.

Her answer raises some serious questions for photographers, especially serious fine art photographers.  One assumes that people who take pictures for the “Playboy wannabe’ web sites such as femjoy.com, metmodels.com, mplstudios.com, nudes.hegre-art.com and that ilk don’t bother themselves with such questions and there is no doubt that serious pornographers are incapable of even contemplating such issues.  Serious pornographers call into question the scientific consensus that Neanderthals are extinct.

For today, all I do is raise the question.  Later posts in this series will explore the issue.