Comments on: Butterfingers may cost magazine photographer $300,000

By: eaze2009

eaze2009 — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 03:39:00 +0000

If he was a photographer and his managers knew he was doing something this expensive …
Didn’t they insure him ? They were supposed to do that .

By: eaze2009

eaze2009 — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 03:36:00 +0000

Exactly !!!

By: teapot

teapot — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 03:13:00 +0000

I lol’d, ah how I lol’d.

By: Kimmo

Kimmo — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 02:04:00 +0000

Yeah, either $300k is a travesty of an undervaluation (which is my feeling) and/or millions for stuff from living peeps is ridiculously overvalued (which is also my feeling).

By: bklynchris

bklynchris — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:44:00 +0000

I wonder how long it took to fall? Made me think of this article re-the mental plasticity of time as theorized by the way too sexy neurobiologist Eagleman, where he comments on a letter from a former curator at a museum who had accidentally knocked over a Ming vase. “He said the thing took fucking forever to fall.”

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/25/110425fa_fact_bilger#ixzz1tCGS8yzj

By: Sparg

Sparg — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:27:00 +0000

Another fine example pointing out the transitory nature of our physical reality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwMgZQbIvFU

By: bklynchris

bklynchris — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:22:00 +0000

Given that probably all Chihuly did to create the piece in question was to knock it off the blow pipe, she should not feel that bad.

By: Will Bueche

Will Bueche — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:01:00 +0000

Same here! We’ve been trained to think that the most valuable things in the world are music files, followed by other copyrights. Antiques pale in comparison to the value of an mp3 or a candy wrapper.

By: dculberson

dculberson — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:32:00 +0000

Shades of this sad incident:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnsizkVjGm8

By: Narmitaj

Narmitaj — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:28:00 +0000

Shades of Armstrong & Miller, with Ben Miller as a hapless telly art historian.

By: Ito Kagehisa

Ito Kagehisa — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:16:00 +0000

In 2000, a beer company filming a commercial in Machu Picchu broke the hitching post of the sun. Since the bloody Catholics had already destroyed all the spares, the Intihuatan at Machu Picchu was the last one left. This is probably the actual cause of global warming, you know, the whole Earth is wobbling all around now.

By: Recluse

Recluse — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:40:00 +0000

LOL! I had the same thought. I was guessing that during a photo shoot a Butterfinger bar was caught somewhere in the frame and Nestle was suing the guy 300,000 for copyright infringement a la Louis Vuitton.

“You just dropped a 2600 year old artifact!!!”
“What a relief, I’m glad it wasn’t NEW”

By: Tribune

Tribune — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:40:00 +0000

I wonder if this in instigated by one insurer to have another insurer pay. Or were both parties really stupid enough not to be insured.

By: Sophie Connor

Sophie Connor — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:16:00 +0000

No curator I’ve ever met glues bits of art back together, that’s normally left to the conservators.

By: Max Meyer

Max Meyer — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:22:00 +0000

As a fine art photographer, this sounds like a million nightmares to me.

I regularly handle work that is worth at least that much, but fortunately, is much more durable (paintings on canvas & board from the last ~150 years), and am very, very insured, should the worst happen.

By: Franklin

Franklin — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:11:00 +0000

can’t believe it got NOKed over.

By: misscleocallmenow

misscleocallmenow — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:50:00 +0000

I believe this is the wife of the famous* artist, Arman.

* I had never heard of him, but the art world is not my thing.

By: Michael Summers

Michael Summers — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:46:00 +0000

“Terracotta shattered and the walls came tumbling down”

By: jacklaughing

jacklaughing — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:40:00 +0000

This was my first thought, especially if he’s a contract photographer. If he’s staff, his employer has a responsibility to insure against this. But isn’t the owner insured? Surely someone who owns items of this value in their private home has insurance of their own, otherwise they’re one natural disaster away from a lot of disappointment.

By: NelC

NelC — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:36:00 +0000

Clearly it can’t be restored to its former glory, but I challenge the owner’s assertion that it can’t be re-assembled at all. Museum curators are quite adept at that kind of thing and do it all the time. A lot of ancient stuff gets mangled by time and has to be painstakingly glued back together.

By: Christopher

Christopher — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:34:00 +0000

I do feel a little bit of sympathy for the photographer, but probably only because a friend of mine once dropped a piece of Chihuly glass while moving it to an exhibit. Although she was lucky–it was only a small piece, and only worth $5000.

By: Guest

Guest — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:31:00 +0000

http://www.losinghorns.com/

By: TruthByTrial

TruthByTrial — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:27:00 +0000

Does anyone else feel that the oldest know figurine statue from over 2,600 years ago should not be in a private collector’s living room? Indiana Jones was right, “It belongs in a museum!”

By: Cameron Postelwait

Cameron Postelwait — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:23:00 +0000

expensive candybar. (my thoughts just from reading the title)

By: Layne

Layne — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:12:00 +0000

Now it’s modern art…

Honestly, $300K sounds pretty cheap with the price of artworks lately. That’d buy, what…1/2 a Banksy?

By: NelC

NelC — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:08:00 +0000

And if you’re the photographer you insist that the client (or an employee of the client) handles it, so if the worst happens you’re not liable.

By: inkfumes

inkfumes — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:03:00 +0000

Just sweep it under the rug.

By: Erik Hess

Erik Hess — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:00:00 +0000

This is a big reason most high-end clients will require photographers to have liability insurance (among other types of insurance) before booking them for a shoot.

Note to photographers: Always be insured, especially if you’re working with priceless artefacts!

By: nox

nox — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:59:00 +0000

So you know something about ancient subsaharan art?

You don’t own something like that without having it appraised and insured, but I guess the policy didn’t cover accidental dropping. Odd really, I’d expect someone with 300K statues to have maids who might knock things over.

By: M Carlson

M Carlson — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:59:00 +0000

THIS.