01:46:54 · Anish Agarwal, Derek Blasberg, John Coogan, Jordi Hays, Apoorva Mehta
[01:46:54] S6: Mhmm. [01:46:54] S4: And on a day like this, where we've had such, you know, incredible and surprising election results. In 2004, he was doing a project called Democracy for the New Yorker. And he was... [01:47:05] S1: Was that the start of Bush two? Was that year? [01:47:07] S4: That was... It was right after the Democratic National Convention. [01:47:10] S1: Okay. So one [01:47:10] S4: of the last portraits he took was of of a young senator called Barack [01:47:15] S1: Barack Obama. Yeah. Okay. [01:47:17] S4: So he has an incredible portrait [01:47:18] S1: of Wow. [01:47:19] S4: Obama at at the end of his career [01:47:21] S0: Barackable. Yeah. [01:47:22] S4: With no gray hair. You know, because you can date it by the grays. Yeah. And he actually... He woke up with with like a, you know, a pounding headache. Sure. But he got... And he was supposed to shoot he was supposed to shoot a young... A teenage girl who was pregnant and was was gonna be denied an abortion. So he was like... He was documenting like real America who's sometimes overlooked by the the... System. By the system. Sure. And he got the shot and he went and laid down and it turned out he had had a, you know... [01:47:50] S1: Brain aneurysm? [01:47:51] S4: Brain aneurysm. Yeah. Wow. Wow. So he passed away. But he always said he wanted to go out with his boots on. Working. Yeah. So... I mean Respect. [01:47:58] S0: Sadly, bittersweetly Yeah. He did. Just a closure [01:48:01] S3: Yeah. [01:48:01] S1: To the story.
01:48:01 · John Coogan, Derek Blasberg, Jordi Hays
[01:48:01] S1: To the story. [01:48:02] S4: And then I was told that you've got some film major people in here. Sure. Or some... Yeah. [01:48:07] S1: Oh, yeah. Yeah. The whole production team. [01:48:09] S0: So I don't know if they all graduated, but... They wouldn't be here.... A film major. [01:48:17] S4: Yeah. They majorly liked film. [01:48:19] S0: Yeah. [01:48:19] S1: Yeah. Fans here. [01:48:22] S4: So Ron Howard Yeah. Who's academy... There I've been in some some... I think they're I think they're thumbs... Thumbs up. Four thumbs up. Ron Howard directed a documentary about which will drop on that's what we say still? Do we still say drop? Do I sound like a middle aged dad if [01:48:41] S0: I say drop? No. We're dropping all the time. [01:48:43] S1: The drops are good. [01:48:44] S4: So it drops Yeah. On Netflix on November Cool. [01:48:46] S0: Eleventh. [01:48:47] S1: Okay. [01:48:47] S4: Yeah. So all fall [01:48:49] S0: Yeah. [01:48:50] S4: Yeah. All Avedon. [01:48:50] S0: Yeah. And... [01:48:52] S1: Yeah. Take me through a little bit more of his his legacy, the style. Like, if I'm looking at modern photography, modern fashion photography, what am I seeing that triggers, oh, that's Avedon inspired. [01:49:03] S4: So a lot of a lot of the things that we credit Avedon Mhmm. For establishing is number one in in in post war Europe, he established Paris as like the fashion capital. Okay. There's a famous picture... [01:49:16] S1: I thought that went back like hundreds of years or something. I don't know.
01:49:16 · John Coogan, Derek Blasberg, Jordi Hays
[01:49:16] S1: I thought that went back like hundreds of years or something. I don't know. [01:49:19] S4: Well, there... I mean, obviously... Yeah. There's the... Head chopped off for being a little too closely aligned fashion and excess. [01:49:25] S1: Sure. Sure. [01:49:26] S4: Sure. So there's definitely a precedent for that. Yeah. But... And and you know, after World War two Yeah. So much of European businesses and even culture was so decimated. Yeah. So Carmel Snow, who was the editor of Harper's Bazaar, really commissioned him and challenged him [01:49:39] S1: Yeah. [01:49:39] S4: To return and capture the opulence and and inspiration and [01:49:44] S1: Yeah. [01:49:45] S4: In Paris, and the most... If we measure success around here in dollars, the most expensive fashion photograph ever sold at auction was Dovima and the Elephants, which was a picture he took in post war Paris at auction for over $1,000,000 [01:50:05] S1: Wow. [01:50:05] S0: A couple years ago. [01:50:06] S4: And one recently resold in private hands for more than $2,000,000. Yeah. It's got a lot of money for... [01:50:11] S0: Is that starting a new trend? Photograph. [01:50:12] S1: In art collecting, fashion photography, reaching into that Christie Sotheby's world a little bit more?
01:50:12 · John Coogan, Derek Blasberg, Apoorva Mehta, Jordi Hays
[01:50:12] S1: In art collecting, fashion photography, reaching into that Christie Sotheby's world a little bit more? [01:50:18] S4: So he... Apadon's really credited with a couple of other photographers, including Irving Penn, which was sort of his frenemy. They they sort of came up the same time. He did a lot for Harper's Bazaar while Irving Penn's entire career was spent at Vogue. Mhmm. Avedon joined Vogue Mhmm. Later with Diana Vreeland. These are... [01:50:37] S3: Mhmm. [01:50:37] S4: There's maybe one or two people who are following me on this on this name... [01:50:41] S0: TBPN of fashion would have been putting up like traded cars for these moves. That's what I... That's how closely I'm following. [01:50:50] S4: Prediction market for how long will stay in In this [01:50:54] S1: a different world historical prediction markets, for sure. [01:50:56] S3: But he [01:50:56] S4: was one of the first guys to try and establish photography as a fine art medium. Sure. And it's tricky because of course when there are negatives Yeah. You can duplicate things [01:51:04] S1: Of course. [01:51:05] S4: In a different process [01:51:05] S0: Yeah. [01:51:06] S4: Than say a painter. [01:51:07] S1: Yeah. [01:51:07] S4: So when he dies Mhmm. His estate prevents the posthumous printing of photographs. So it's like... Yeah. The show, when you come to tonight, you'll see the pictures have all been printed by him in his lifetime and signed. Mhmm. So there is like this [01:51:22] S3: It's finite.
01:51:22 · Apoorva Mehta, Derek Blasberg, Anish Agarwal, Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[01:51:22] S3: It's finite. [01:51:23] S4: A finite amount of of images. Mhmm. And there are other photographers who have since passed away after him who have modeled their estate and their, you know, their market value. [01:51:35] S6: Yeah. [01:51:35] S4: On that sort of pretext. [01:51:37] S0: Yeah. But there's other photographers that when they die, they sell their their negatives and their rights to their images to like Getty Images. [01:51:44] S4: Yeah. And you can you can go on Getty Images right now and buy a Slim Aarons picture of [01:51:48] S1: Mhmm. [01:51:48] S0: The bathers at the Hotel Du Cap in the South Of France for like $15. [01:51:52] S1: That's cool. [01:51:52] S4: That will never be worth more than $15. [01:51:54] S1: Yeah. It might be a steal. [01:51:55] S4: But maybe. [01:51:56] S1: Might be [01:51:56] S4: nice But go the Dovima picture hopefully that Yeah. Someone bought for $2,000,000 will not be worth 15,000,000 Yeah. Of course. Of course. [01:52:02] S0: What's what surprised you, if anything, about the explosion of of AI imagery? Sort of interesting, at least in my experience. The things that I never would have gone out of my way to hire a great photographer for, I'll make images for that. But all the stuff that I historically would have hired a photographer for, I'm still hiring the photographer. I have no no demand at all to like replace those like really special moments or or things in my business with... [01:52:31] S4: AI to create like special moments or do you
01:52:31 · Derek Blasberg, Jordi Hays, Apoorva Mehta, John Coogan
[01:52:31] S4: AI to create like special moments or do you [01:52:33] S0: use I'm saying I'm saying like I'll use AI as a joke. Then and then anything that I care about, I'm like, well obviously we need to get the real image. [01:52:43] S3: Yeah. [01:52:43] S0: Right? Because it's like Yeah. It's capturing because it's like so emotional, it's like a it's a memory whether it's in like, you know, a family photoshoot or in a business context. [01:52:52] S1: Mhmm. [01:52:52] S0: Right? And so I have like no demand for what I would call serious imagery in an AI context. [01:53:00] S4: Or maybe precious. Yeah. Precious. We were when we were working on this book, you go into his archives Mhmm. And he would be shooting Marilyn Monroe, for example. And there would be like a finite amount of negatives. Because at this time, in the early sixties... She died in 1962, so he he shot her just before she passed away. Also shot her in the nineteen fifties. Film was expensive. Processing was expensive. And the biggest difference that I see when it comes to AI created images and the golden age of photography is that we have... I have like a 160,000 pictures on my phone. I've never printed them. They're totally disorganized. But the difference between then and and now is that that was, you know, you... Sometimes you would you would draw a picture before you took it, you know, you would you would not waste the film. You wouldn't waste the... Interesting. [01:53:46] S0: You're like, let's test this, basically.