Peter Lik Sells Most Expensive Photo Of All Time; Similar Images Available Online For Free
"Phantom," a photography by Peter Lik, was sold to a private collector for $6.5 million today, making it the most expensive photo ever sold. The record-breaking shot -- it's a black-and-white version of the color photo called "Ghost" -- shows rays of light beaming down into the arches of Antelope Canyon in Lake Powell Navajo Tribal Park, creating what appears to be a human figure. It is a stunningly picturesque scene -- but does that make it a good photograph?
Art critic Jonathan Jones criticized the high price of the photograph in the Guardian. "Beauty is cheap if you point a camera at a grand phenomenon of nature," he wrote. "The monochrome detailing of the canyon is sculptural enough, and a shaft of sunlight penetrating its depths becomes the phantom of the title. Yet, in fact, this downward stream of light is simply a natural aspect of Antelope Canyon."
The "Phantom" broke the record held by Andreas Gursky’s “Rhein II,” which sold for $4.3 million in 2011.
Users on Twitter seem to agree that the high price of Lik's work has very little to do with the photograph and everything to do with the dramatic location.
While we don't want to diminish this new record, here are nine perfectly good photographs of crepuscular rays in Antelope Canyon put online for free under Wikimedia Commons:
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