"Photographer Annie Leibovitz’s latest work of art is a book — a book that measures more than two feet high, runs to 476 pages, and comes with its own tripod, designed by Marc Newson. 'You could never hold it in your lap and thumb through it,' she told the LA Times. 'What I assume people will do is change the picture now and then. It is so big that by the time you get to the middle, you can’t remember where it started. It’s not a book. It’s really an installation, a piece of art.'”
"The eponymous edition published by Taschen costs $2,500. That’s actually not bad, as far as art prices go, but still more than most of us laypeople can afford. Big art comes in two sizes, it seems: experiential or expensive.
"The Leibovitz book is actually modeled on another book that Taschen published, back in 1999, of the work of photographer Helmut Newton. That tome — titled, appropriately, SUMO — was roughly the same dimensions as the Leibovitz, weighed 66 pounds, also came with a specially designed stand (by Philippe Starck), and cost $1,500 (then; copies today sell for $15,000). In what reads like a desperate cry for relevance, the publisher bills it as “the biggest and most expensive book production in the 20th century.”
Read the piece by Jillian Steinhauer in Hyperallergic here:
