"Dead Troops Talk (A vision after an ambush of a Red Army patrol, near Moqor, Afghanistan, winter 1986," © Jeff Wall.

A 1992 photograph by Jeff Wall sold for $3,666,500 yesterday evening during a Post-War and Contemporary art auction at Christie’s in New York City. The previous record sale for a work by Jeff Wall was $1.1 million.

The work “Dead Troops Talk (A vision after an ambush of a Red Army patrol, near Moqor, Afghanistan, winter 1986″ depicts a grisly scene in which Soviet Red Army soldiers killed by the Afghan mujahideen have come back to life and are conversing with one another.

The photograph, framed in a light box, was the first in an edition of two, with one artist’s print. The photograph has been in the collection of David and Geraldine Pincus, who acquired it from Marian Goodman Gallery in New York. The Pincus’s substantial collection formed a major part of the sale, which set a record for a Post-War and Contemporary art sale at $388.5 million, according to Christie’s.

The high lot in the sale was Mark Rothko’s “Orange, Red, Yellow,” which sold for $86.9 million, another record for a work from the Post-War period.

Three other photographs were included in the sale. A Richard Prince work that appropriated a Marlboro advertisement, “Untitled (Cowboys),” sold for $602,500. Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled #122″ sold for $206,500. And Nan Goldin’s “Ballad Triptych” sold for $218,500.

Related: Eggleston’s First-Ever Large Pigment Prints Earn 5.9 Million at Auction

After announcing last week that they would increase prices worldwide for their film and single-use camera products, FujiFilm’s North America division has clarified what those increases will mean for the markets in the United States and Canada.

In an announcement today, the company said that prices on all film would rise “approximately 20 percent.” The increase will take effect in August 2012. The company had originally announced that the increases would be effective beginning in May of this year.

“The price increases are a result of the continuing decline in demand for film products, the high costs of production, and the increased expenses associated with raw materials, including silver and petro-chemicals, and energy,” the company explained in its announcement. “Fujifilm is unable to absorb these costs entirely and must implement price increases at this time.”

Prices for FujiFilm’s one-time-use cameras, often called disposable cameras, will increase 15 percent, the company said.

Related: FujiFilm Announces Price Increase

Earlier this week FujiFilm announced that a price increase will take effect starting in May for its color negative films, color reversal films, black and white films and QuickSnap single use cameras.

Though the announcement (full text below) was short on specific details, it did say that the increases would be “substantial” and would be in the “double digits” for some films depending on where they are sold.

FujiFilm noted that, “The demand for film products is continuously decreasing, yen’s appreciation and the cost of production, such as raw materials, oil and energy, continues to rise or stay at high level.”

A representative for FujiFilm told PDN the company would issue specific information about increases in the US market in the next few days, so stay tuned.

For more on the future of the film photography business, be sure to check out our report coming in the June issue of PDN.

Press Release, April 23, 2012

FUJIFILM Corporation announces price increase of Photographic Films

FUJIFILM Corporation has announced that it will implement a worldwide price increase for its photographic films. The price increases are substantial and it would be double digit, but will vary depending on products, markets and regions.

1. Products: Photographic Films: Color Negative Films, Color Reversal Films, Black and White Films, and Quick Snap.

2. Date of Price Increases: Effective from May 2012

The demand for film products is continuously decreasing, yen’s appreciation and the cost of production, such as raw materials, oil and energy, continues to rise or stay at high level. Under such circumstances, despite our effort to maintain the production cost, Fujifilm is unable to absorb these costs during the production process and is forced to pass on price increases.
To sustain its photo imaging business, Fujifilm has decided to increase the price of photographic films.

Fujifilm remains committed to photographic products and asserts that even with the new price. Its photographic products remain exceptionally good value compared with other system products.
The new pricing structure will be applied to each market based on its individual conditions.

Related: Kodak Files For Bankruptcy Protection

Images © Koto Bolofo. Left: Perfumer Geza Schoen. Right: Paper Passion.

When bibliophiles celebrate print they often talk about the weight or feel of paper, about color, binding, typeface, design… but scent?

Leave it to print purists and publishers Gerhard Steidl and Karl Lagerfeld to pay attention to the often-overlooked, olfactory component of the print experience. It was Lagerfeld who first pointed out the scent of print to Steidl, which led to a collaboration between Steidl, Wallpaper* magazine and master perfumer Geza Schoen to create Paper Passion perfume—”For Booklovers.”

The scent debuted this week at at the Wallpaper* Handmade exhibition in Milan, which runs through April 22 at the headquarters of men’s clothing designer Brioni, and it will be available to the public on May 30.

The perfume comes hidden inside the pages of a Steidl-published book, designed by Lagerfeld, which includes various odes to the printed page and its characteristic scent.

As Lagerfeld has said, “The smell of a freshly printed book is the best smell in the world.” Backlit touch-screens may be the future, but the future doesn’t smell nearly as nice.

An article published yesterday by Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald details the Department of Homeland Security’s repeated questioning and harassment of an American filmmaker when she has attempted to reenter the country after traveling overseas.

According to Greewald’s article, award-winning documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, who has released two films of a trilogy about the War on Terror, has endured DHS interrogations nearly each of the 40 times she has tried to reenter the country since 2006, when her first documentary film about a Sunni opposition leader in Iraq was released.

Agents often wait for her at the door as she disembarks from international flights. Poitras, a US citizen, has been interrogated for hours, had her personal belongings and reporter’s notebooks seized, held and copied, and her laptop, phone and other devices searched and copied.

It is easy to imagine photojournalists who are working on projects that may be critical of the US government or its “War on Terror” suffering similar difficulties, and DHS’s treatment of Poitras should outrage any US journalist.

As Greenwald reports, Poitras is not alone in her experiences, but her systematic harassment has made traveling for her work miserable, and she has been forced to resort to other methods of transporting and transmitting her work in order to protect her privacy, her rights as a journalist, and the identities of her sources.

Writes Greenwald: “She now avoids traveling with any electronic devices. She uses alternative methods to deliver the most sensitive parts of her work — raw film and interview notes — to secure locations. She spends substantial time and resources protecting her computers with encryption and password defenses. Especially when she is in the U.S., she avoids talking on the phone about her work, particularly to sources. And she simply will not edit her films at her home out of fear — obviously well-grounded — that government agents will attempt to search and seize the raw footage.”

Greenwald’s article also notes that two pieces of legislation proposed by congresspeople aimed at limiting DHS’s power to question US citizens have gained zero traction.

The article is well worth the read for any photojournalists who are working overseas, especially those who are reporting stories on sensitive topics like America’s military actions.

If you’ve been detained or questioned by DHS because of your work and are open to sharing your story with the PDN audience, please comment below or send an email to: editor@pdnoline.com.

The body of a white male found recently with a camera lens in a mass grave in eastern Libya could be that of photojournalist Anton Hammerl, the Huffington Post reports. Hammerl was shot by troops loyal to deposed dictator Muammar Qaddafi on April 5, 2011, according to other journalists who were traveling with him at the time.

Those journalists were captured and detained for several weeks, and reported Hammerl’s death after their release.

The Huffington Post says that Peter Bouckaert, the emergencies director for Human Rights Watch, has been in Libya following inquiries into the whereabouts of Hammerl’s remains. Bouckaert is now trying to get the governments of South Africa, Britain or Austria to help administer DNA tests for a positive identification of the remains.

Related: Print Auction to Benefit Children of Anton Hammerl to be Held at Christie’s

On May 15, 2012, Christie’s will hold an auction of photojournalism prints to benefit the children of Anton Hammerl. The South African-born photojournalist was killed while covering the conflict in Libya in April last year by forces loyal to Muammar Qaddafi.

Hammerl was survived by his wife and three young children.

Photographers who have donated prints for the auction include Sebastiao Salgado, Alec Soth, Christopher Anderson, Jane Evelyn Atwood, Yuri Kozyrev, Larry Fink, Lynsey Addario, Susan Meiselas, Ron Haviv, David Burnett, Joao Silva, Samuel Aranda, Marcus Bleasdale, David Hume Kennerly, Roger Ballen and Vincent Laforet.
Update: Christiane Amanpour, the ABC News global correspondent, has agreed to host the May 15 benefit. Tickets to the event are now available for a suggested donation is $75. Photographers Danny Clinch, Platon, Giles Duley, Jason Florio, Anastasia Taylor-Lind and the estate of Tim Hetherington have recently given images to the auction.

Those interested in bidding on prints can do so in person or online. More information can be found on the Friends of Anton Hammerl site, which was created by his friends to benefit Hammerl’s children.

http://www.friendsofanton.org/

Related article:

PDN Photo of the Day: Friends of a Friend (7 Photos)

A major collector of William Eggleston’s work filed suit against the photographer yesterday in a U.S. District Court, accusing him of devaluing his vintage dye transfer prints by selling new, large-scale pigment prints of many of his iconic works. The suit by Jonathan Sobel, a collector of 192 of Eggleston’s works, was prompted by a March 12, 2012, auction of Eggleston’s new pigment prints at Christie’s, which brought in more than $5.9 million.

Sobel, who estimates the value of his Eggleston collection at $3 million-$5 million, is suing the photographer, his two sons and the Eggleston Artistic Trust for unspecified damages, and has asked the court to bar Eggleston from making or selling any more prints of the photographs he has printed and sold previously as limited editions. Sobel says in his claim that he has eight dye transfer prints that were devalued by the sale of new digital versions at the March 12 auction.

According to gallerist Robert Mann, who sold Eggleston’s work in the late 1970s while working with one of the photographer’s original dealers, Harry Lunn Jr., Sobel is not the only person upset by Eggleston’s decision to offer a new edition of previously sold, limited edition work.

“I understand there are a lot of people out there who are pissed, and I don’t blame them,” Mann told PDN. “I’ve heard that other people are concerned, upset, wondering how this is possible, and what’s stopping it from happening again. It’s a credibility factor. I would be mortified if I was working with his collection.”

This story is developing. Check PDNOnline later this afternoon for more information on the case and what it means for the Eggleston market.

In this short program for State of the Arts, a New Jersey public television series produced by PCK Media, LaToya Ruby Frazier talks about her introduction to photography and about the work she is showing in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, including a performance piece that will debut on Friday, May 11.

Says Whitney Biennial co-curator Jay Sanders, “Her work embodies the history of documentary photography, photography that articulates social conditions, that articulates the reality of working people, but at the same time she’s very well read and embedded in a dialogue coming out of conceptual art.”

LaToya Ruby Frazier at the Whitney from PCK Media on Vimeo.

Related: PDN’s 30 2012: LaToya Ruby Frazier

United Photo Industries, a Brooklyn-based collective dedicated to exhibiting and promoting photography, has announced their first major event, which will take place at a river-front park in Brooklyn, New York, this summer from June 22-July 1.

Dubbed “Photoville,” the event at Brooklyn Bridge Park, will feature 35 concurrent exhibitions of photography from all over the world. Each exhibition will be housed in shipping containers, forming a “village” of photography exhibitions, which will be free and open to the public.

As part of the Photoville programming, PDN has joined with United Photo Industries and Brooklyn Bridge Park to produce an outdoor photo exhibition called “The Fence,” which will adorn Brooklyn Bridge Park for two months this summer.

To create the installation, more than 300 images will be printed on photographic mesh, forming a 1,000-foot fence. The images exhibited on “The Fence” will be selected from contest entries by a jury of photography curators and editors. For more information on how to enter, visit The Fence contest site here.

In addition to the exhibitions, Photoville will also feature outdoor projections, panel discussions and lectures, workshops, a food and beer garden, tents with photo gear vendors, and even a dog run.

For more information about the inaugural Photoville event visit photovillenyc.org.