Why the New York Times Took Australian Millionaire Photographer Peter Lik to Task

David Segal of the Financial Review has written a very interesting article on the success of fine art photographer Peter Lik and the market on which he thrives. [Sean]
 
From the Financial Review:

He’s the creator of the world’s most expensive photograph – it sold for $ US6.5 million – but the success of Australian fine art photographer Peter Lik raises questions about his empire, and his art.
 
Peter Lik is in awe of himself. When he describes his career as a fine art photographer, he speaks with the satisfaction of a guy who has performed miracles, at the pace of a bystander who has just caught a glimpse of Superman.
 
The words tumble forth in self-exalting, run-on sentences, most of them laced with profanity, all of them in his sunny, chummy Australian accent.
 
“I’m the world’s most famous photographer, most sought-after photographer, most awarded photographer,” he said one recent afternoon, sipping a can of Red Bull in a conference room at Peter Lik USA, a 100,000-square-foot headquarters in Las Vegas devoted solely to the production and sale of Peter Lik photography.
 
“So I said” – and what Lik said next is an unprintable version of “the heck with it,” and then – “I want to make something special, special, special, special.”
 
That something special was a photograph called Phantom, an image of an eerily human-shaped swirl of dust in Antelope Canyon in Arizona. In December, his company announced in a news release that an anonymous collector had spent $ US6.5 million ($ 8.4 million) for Phantom. That crushed the previous record, held by Andreas Gursky, whose Rhein II fetched $ US4.3 million at an auction in 2011, and Cindy Sherman, whose Untitled #96 brought $ US3.9 million at another auction the same year.
 
But Gursky and Sherman are titans, with solo shows in pre-eminent museums.
 
Who is Peter Lik?

The entire article can be read on the Financial Review.

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