Filed under: Photography — Alan @ 4:25 am
Californian antique enthusiast Rick Norsigian knew that he wanted when he started sifting through an old garage in Fresno in 2000. He was in search of an old vintage barber’s chair to add to his already unique collection of petrol pumps, telephone switchboards, and aeroplanes propellers.
While the chair turned out to be a waste of time, Norsigian stumbled onto something else that changed his life and pocketbook when he found two antique glass negatives that according to an art appraiser from Beverly Hills were created by Ansel Adams.
In order to get the lot, Norsigian a painter and construction worker, bargained the lot down to a $45 value, however according to the appraiser his find may be worth over £129m.
Arnold Peter, his attorney, stated that a team of experts took a close look at the negatives and decided that there were 65 negatives that were from Adam’s early work taken between the time period of 1919 and the 1930s and were negatives that were rescued from a home fire in 1937. Adams was said to be heartbroken after the fire occurred as it destroyed about a third of his photos.
Adams’ is known for his portraits of the American West in black and white photos that are now easily recognizable from many posters and US greeting cards. His work helped place photography on the same pedestal as music and painting and also helped to drive the US national park movement.
Peter said that there is no direct authority that can determine the authenticity of photos so they decided to look at all the evidence they could from a scientific viewpoint and everything they have found proves the negatives are indeed those of Ansel Adams.
Filed under: Photography — Alan @ 2:57 am
The mobile based picture search service by Google aptly named Google Goggles is ready to add some culture to its line-up as Google has secured a deal to purchase the Oxford based Android mobile app called Plink that will allow users to identify works of art simply by taking a photo.
The founders of the app- James Philbin and Mack Cummins- will be joining the Google team to enhance the capabilities of Google Goggles which dates back to a December launch date in order to help Google search via mobile photo.
Plink is the first UK acquisition made by Google, but it is a small one. Google Goggles has however already offered mobile picture art identification but it is looking to improve its previous offering by adding more talent to its team since mobile search is growing in importance to the Google website.
Eric Schmidt the CEO of Google commented in January that the company would pick up a new company every month but most will be small purchases.
In December Plink won $100,000 from Google after Android users chose it as one of the top reference apps available to them.
Mobile product development director Hugo Barra who is based in London believes that due to the fact mobiles have sensors such as GPS and camera they are able to offer the world and users plenty of new search experiences which Google is trying to capture and relate back to users.
Filed under: Art News, Exhibitions, Photography — admin @ 9:15 am
A Manchester-based photographer and digital artist has found growing interest in his work from the Far East. Andrew Brooks, whose work has been exhibited at URBIS and CUBE Gallery, has been creating quite a stir in Japan, Taiwan and China.
Brooks was unaware of this popularity until he saw a magazine article published in the Popular Photography magazine praising his talent and futuristic style. After that it wasn’t long before huge numbers of visitors nearly crashed his website all of them coming from Japan, Taiwan and China. This was followed quickly by features on gigazine.net and fengniao.com as word of his work began to spread.
“It seems like it was one of those things that happened just through people seeing my photographs on my website as I’d never really targeted it as a potential market for my work,” says Brooks – who last year had his Hidden Manchester show named as one of the URBIS gallery in Manchester’s most popular exhibitions. “The coverage clearly sparked a lot of interest in my work and it’s been incredible to see all these visitors and offers of work coming in from the East. I know that there’s another eight-page feature in a Taiwanese magazine coming up, so I’m just getting ready to deal with the surge of interest that could create!” says Brooks.
At the end of 2009 late last year Brooks was invited to the prestigious China Pingyao International Photography Festival in the province of Shaanxi and a meeting with the one of China’s leading exhibition curators Teng Haolong who discussed the potential for a British photographer to become big in the East. Brooks as he was able to spend some time capturing cityscape images of some of China’s supercities as well as landscapes of the countryside and temples out East, before returning home to Manchester.
As he says, “I’m thrilled that there’s so much interest in my work from the East and fortunately there’s still a huge demand for my work in the UK, so with any luck it looks like I’ll be kept busy this year!”
Website: http://www.andrewbrooksphotography.com
