There is no Jacques Legare. I feel dirty.

johannielscom said:
What eludes me, apparently the guy gave up on photography, or his camera would not have been in storage?
Click to expand...

If he had given up on photography, he'd probably have converted it into money. He might have become homeless and put everything he did not want to give up in storage, or his possessions were put in storage after his death, waiting for a heir to be found (there probably won't have been anyone at hand).

In any case, rather different from VM - he was a formally trained artist and had even been successful to the point of international exhibitions for a while. Rediscovery of artists that faded after a brief success is not that rare - it is being utterly and absolutely obscure from start to end that sets VM apart...
 
Nice find to say the least - need to see more of the US photos to make a judgement but look interesting enough. A lot of work needed for dating and captioning and probably well worth effort if you have the time.
Best of luck though!
 
This guy has exhibited. There can be no question of abandoned copyrights - once he published, he implicitly joined at least the Belgian copyright collecting agency (perhaps the US one as well).
 
There is no Jacques Legare. I feel dirty.

My apologies to all RFF members. There is no Jacques Legare. It's a hoax. I'm very ashamed. The photos are from my own negatives.

I've been wanting to do something like this ever since I first heard about the Vivian Maier case. Something sounded fishy from the start. If you're dead and unknown, your photos are automatically better than someone who is still clicking around and breathing. Throw around a few names of famous friends, add a dash of mystery, and --like magic-- a new artist is born. A black-and-white print goes from worthless to $1500. Amazing.

I invite all RFF members to participate in the Jacques Legare hoax. (Truth: I bought a used M2 from a guy in Canada, and it was nicely engraved with that name on it. I'm betting he was a dentist from Quebec who passed away, leaving a few Leicas behind.) Let's see if anyone in the outside world picks it up, and how far it goes. Only you will know.

Or invent your own dead artist. It's easy.

I owe special apologies to johannielscom, jesse1dog, and sevo. They thoughtfully contributed to the discussion, taking my post at face value. NY Dan, I suspect, knew it was a fake, and PMCC was hot on his tail.

Again, sorry for abusing your trust.
 
The non-profit you supposedly set up kind of gave it away for me. Have you ever gone through the hassle of setting up a 501(c)(3)?
It's not something one would do without a lot of money and a marginally attainable goal in sight.
 
My take is the following:
1) Vivian Maier
She left something like 150 thousand of negatives. If you are a sensitive and inquisitive mind, and you spend 60 years documenting life, the odds are you are going to make some great images. Some of her images are outstanding, but what is missing is her own editing, therefore there will always remain the nagging thought, if she is really "in full" responsible for the selected output. I don't really think it matters so much in reality, as many thousands of reporters have had their best work selected by others, but it can somewhat diminish the perception that the images are entirely the result of her creative process. As to the prices people are willing to pay, they are not any objective measure of value. If the price was such a measure, some photos by Diane Arbus would be worth 1000 times more than "The Rhine". To the author of the post: if you are offended by the prices Maier's photos fetch, get over it - if you are good and you know it, it should be enough to make you happy.
2) Ownership
This is complicated. Imagine someone buys at an airport sale of lost items a suitcase of Steve Jobs, with the plans of the next uber tech tool, and he decides to produce it himself, or even worse, sells them to Samsung. If the plans were not patented, nominally there is no wrongdoing, but intuitively it does not feel right. On the other hand, if the suitcase contained Steve's gold watch and platinum Leica, nobody could object if you sold them subsequently on Ebay. In Maier's case, what does not seem right, is to put on opposite scales the rights of a guy who created Maier's value through his good will, effort and enormous quantity of work and of another guy who just happens to have 12% of his DNA identical to Vivian, but who would and could not do anything to make her gain recognition or acquire anything. If I were the judge, I would stand behind Maloof 100%.
 
bob338 said:
The non-profit you supposedly set up kind of gave it away for me. Have you ever gone through the hassle of setting up a 501(c)(3)?
It's not something one would do without a lot of money and a marginally attainable goal in sight.
Click to expand...

That hard in the US? Hereabouts, I am board member or director of two, and co-founder/member of half a dozen more...
 
sdotkling said:
If you're dead and unknown, your photos are automatically better than someone who is still clicking around and breathing. Throw around a few names of famous friends, add a dash of mystery, and --like magic-- a new artist is born.
Click to expand...

Or not. You slightly overreached that target by putting too many things into the story which can be trivially corroborated or disproved. Relations to famous artists are easily verified. And once exhibited, there is a copyright collecting agency involved, and there would be books or at the very least catalogues, posters and invitations which you'd expect to find in libraries even if the fame faded before the ascent of the internet - that part of the story would not hold up for more than a few days.

The beauty of the Vivien Mayer story is that it has involves only a handful of vague witnesses to the fact that she kept to herself and had a snapshot hobby, plus a vita with no connection to photography or art at all - in fact, we can never know for sure that any given VM photograph is no fake, even if she and the witnesses should be real.

Still, a fun attempt...
 
Very nice photos, Stephen. I didn't follow closely at first (I'm tired with Vivian Maier talk, so I just look at her photos) but now that I do, I personally find the whole thing amusing, even a bit thought-provoking. (Perhaps I'd have felt different, had I replied in earnest? Dunno.) A lot of postmodern (or is it meta-post?) photography relies in similar devices to raise related problems about photography. There is, I think, an affinity with what Fontcuberta does, for example. Of course, not everyone is going to be game, but you knew that. Depending on how you feel about it, you may have a project there.

PS. I hope others go easy on you, you did apologize after all. But if you want to push ahead with a hoax, you have to have the stomach for it and not mind those who will scream bloody murder.

.

.
 
... it's only immature if one falls for it
yes.gif
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom