Why? He has managed to brand himself so that buyers have a high perceived value of him and his work.

I'd love to be my own brand where I could command that kind of money.

I also think it's a good example that images still have plenty of value to the right buyers and not every photo should be free or $1.

Maybe Peter looks at people like us and thinks "I can't quite imagine how he manages to get people to pay so little for his images"

Nice shot, but the article is correct.  In the underwater photography world I could never figure out how this one dude was getting so much traction because his photography was really not very good (I am not saying Peter Lik's image is crummy, just going to make a point). In fact I used to kick his a-s-s in international competitions, but what I learned was that he was a much better marketer than me. Marketing expertise, in my example, far outweighed the quality and uniqueness of his images. He was a master at that and it got him fame and some fortune.


Just an aside: He died, though, in a diving accident on a deep wreck with his 14 year old son. Photography distracted him in 140 feet, his son, not well trained for technical diving, panicked and caused three deaths, including his father. Some publishing house wanted to use his images from that dive to market them (no matter how bad the image might be) simply because of what happened on that dive and the person's fame.  His wife refused, but the point is that this company would have marketed those images, no matter how mediocre they were, and made a lot of doe. It's all about marketing.

I went to the funeral and it was really sad seeing a small and large coffin next to each other. It changed my life.

Having occasionally dabbled in the antiques business it doesn't surprise me in the least. The jaded auctioneer's answer to the eternal question - "how much is this chipped old plate worth?" is always "as much as the highest bidder is prepared to pay for it". 

wow, for the first time i'm in agreement with a Guardia article.

i would even go further and point out that there are actually better pictures of that canyon available in high res as public domain or CC licence or for a pittance on micros !

but the guy who bought the photo is not a fool as the Guardian claims, he's a wise expert collector and he expect to make a fat profit on his investment, he won't give two sh-its about what this photo is all about, he bought it only because it's a LIK and because he expects the LIK brand to be worth a lot more in the future and especially after Lik's death.

art is never defined by the market !

I think someone is laughing at us. If I had to guess I would say it's military intelligence. Read the art papers by Miles Mathis if you want to get a clue about the "high-end art market".

http://www.lik.com/news/newsarticle24/

modern art has been as a scam since the beginning, as in every classic Ponzi scheme the idea is to give enormous value to a worthless thing and keep perpetuating the system over and over making it so complex and hard to grasp that nobody will understand it's nothing but a scam.

the intelligence community has never drank the kool aid about modernism, they're the only ones who know what's really going on.

Some of the most successful photographers I know are mediocre or competent photographers at best but are incredibly good marketers. They all share one thing: An unshakable confidence that they are the best,  reasonable or not. When you are selling from that belief, others will often buy into it. A star is born.

When you are selling from that belief, others will often buy into it. A star is born.

They're all selling emotions.

And i'm ok with that, but how much an emotion is worth ?

What these buyers are doing is basically setting a precedent and setting the value of a product, once the value is set in stone the product magically becomes valuable and the sky is the limit but in fact it's still a scam no matter the whole art mumbo jumbo, anyone could get better photos paying some professional landscape photographer on assignment, it will not be cheap but centainly not a 6 figures affair !

now that's the real cost with no BS involved, anything else is hot air and marketing and Ponzi schemes.

Lik got the foot in the door in the art market and after 30 yrs finally hit a goldmine, that's the only moral of this story.

The article is troll. The fact that this is not convincing art does not mean that photography is not / cannot be art - or that it does not belong in a world of art. Which is what the article is arguing.

Did you see this: http://www.lik.com/thework/aviator.html ?

I wouldn't hang this anywhere in my home even if he paid me. And people actually give money for this, and good money.

L to the f*cking ol.

Peter Lik likely bought it himself, to generate publicity and get the record.

It's a proof that photography is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for it, just like anything else. You just need to find the right type of buyers!

That's true - I've seen his galleries in Key West and Las Vegas (I think) and the images do look absolutely fantastic the way they're displayed. It's a large part of the selling technique I imagine.

it seems he's printing on Fuji Supergloss, he must use top notch lighting in his stores to bring the maximum out of his photos but it won't look the same in your home unless you redesign the lighting of your room which can probably cost an arm and a leg ...