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Based on the precedent that Sotheby’s and Trustee themselves set in withdrawing selected contested works from the auction, it would seem that all those with work in the collection have standing that would enable them to challenge the disposition of the remaining collection, if that disposition takes the form of a sale. It wouldn’t surprise me if more of the photographers in the collection decided to make their voices heard on this issue as placement of the rest of the collection moves to the front burner. […]
The Polaroid Collection is inarguably a whole, much greater than the sum of its parts. So this auction is an amputation — which doesn’t render the remainder of the collection insignificant or meaningless, but inarguably diminishes it by reducing the complex synergy of its interactive parts. Indeed, I could feel the synergy leaving the room, almost palpably, as I wandered through the galleries. […]
Sotheby’s auction of the Polaroid Collection will start tomorrow evening, Monday, June 21, following six days of previews. The auction will have four sessions: the first tomorrow, starting at 5 p.m., the remaining three on Tuesday, June 22. I hope it goes well — for the sake of Sotheby’s; for the sake of the creditors on whose behalf Trustee John R. Stoebner obtained the Minnesota Bankruptcy Court’s permission to hold the auction; and, most of all, for the market for photography. Poor results would serve no one’s interest, including mine. Indeed, I’d be delighted to see this sale set new records for some of the photographers involved. […]
The publication of such a glib, superficial and ill-considered “psychoanalytic” attack on freelance activity beneath a sensationalized headline was obviously intended as a provocative act; I found myself impelled to respond. A great many of my professional colleagues and close friends — artists, writers, photographers and others — have chosen to exist in what this remarkable diagnosis so condescendingly calls a “lowly status,” and they don’t strike me as inherently any more neurotic than the average late-twentieth-century American. […]
I propose that the creation of a virtual version of the Polaroid Collection, in the form of a comprehensive annotated database of its contents placed online, should become a priority as we move inexorably toward some disposition of the collection that will certainly include sales of individual pieces (the auction), as well as sales or donations of chunks of the remainder to one or more institutions. This should start with the gathering together of existing databases and other annotated records cataloguing portions of the collection or its entirety. From the standpoint of the collection’s significance to the history of photography and our understanding of visual culture in the second half of the twentieth century, the production and availability of such a resource would go along way to making up for the dispersal of its analog contents. […]
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 SPJ Research Award 2014 Thought for the Day Ignorance is a condition; dumbness is a commitment.
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Polaroid Collection: Update 22
Based on the precedent that Sotheby’s and Trustee themselves set in withdrawing selected contested works from the auction, it would seem that all those with work in the collection have standing that would enable them to challenge the disposition of the remaining collection, if that disposition takes the form of a sale. It wouldn’t surprise me if more of the photographers in the collection decided to make their voices heard on this issue as placement of the rest of the collection moves to the front burner. […]