∞ The photography of Joshua L. Smith

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I mentioned last night that I didn’t get why the world’s most expensive photograph sold for so much, so I thought I’d show you so photos that I do like. These are shots from self-taught photographer Joshua L. Smith.



  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_XENVNKXRXRIHZBGMN35N44M3VA dreyfus_ffm

    Gee, Jim, I respect your taste when it comes to music, and almost everything you write, but your definition of visual arts seems to stop at “must be a suitable master for ‘paint by number’”…

    These pictures might be technically OK, but they are nothing else than pretentious kitsch, containing no context beyond what they are showing, and not challenging the viewer. This is not art.

  • Anonymous

    I agree with dreyfus_ffm — these are pretty, well-taken photos, but they are just photos. I think the point of the Gursky photo was that it could go in a gallery, blown up and printed on a massive canvas. Could you imagine any of these photos on a 12-by-6-foot canvas in a gallery? I couldn’t — because they’d not belong, whereas that image of the Rhein would.

    I’m not doing them down here, but I think that creating a photo that can be presented as art (especially on a giant canvas) is an order of magnitude harder than taking a nice photograph.