http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/21/opinion/greene-rowling-author/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

 

It's seemingly not about photography, it's about books. But it is also about the very well known, though often rejected as insignificant factor: the effect of the author's name. Translating into photography: a photograph by an author, unknown in the current viewers context, is by far less likely to draw praises, comparing with the same photograph by a known author. Not that I did not know it before but it's fun to get a yet one more real life absorbing narrative on the same subject :-) . Alternatively, you might not know the author/photographer in advance but you are told that he is known/successful/famous. It changes perception just like that.... Statistically speaking only, of course.

 

Anna

Hi Anna,

Sorry just came across your post. Call it whatever you may, coincidence perhaps ?

 

I have found quite a few beautiful pictures here on the site which vanished under the radar. They not have gotten Kosinski's name either.

 

I wonder how many will curate the image on this link

 

http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=134392&handle=li

 

as boring if they never knew about it.

 

Its a classic picture.

 

A Almulla

 

Many will rate it boring. And I too think it is boring, unless, and this is very important, it is a part of series or an integral part of his portfolio. And regardless whether it's a part of series or not, some art or famous photographs, including classic images, are never for everyone and always for a tiny fraction of viewers.

 

Yes, the picture is classic in an art-historical perspective, mainly because of Eggleston’s way of experimenting, in the 1960s and 70s, with photographs in full, vivid colors, up to then rarely appreciated in fine art photography, and because this photograph is among his first in which he employed the dye-transfer process, allowing him to achieve intensely saturated hues - quite a radical innovation…then! Today, more than 40 years later, this innovation is no longer one. --- Classic and boring are of course not contradictions, a picture may be classic AND boring to a viewer, independently of the historical context - two quite different approaches to appreciation of art, both legitimate and complementing each other.