More Jeff Wall fallout

The top ten bestsellers on Photo-Eye Books:

1. Henri Cartier-Bresson Scrapbook
2. David Maisel Oblivion
3. Ellen Liberatori Guide to Getting Arts Grants
4. Ed Ruscha and Photography
5. Stephen Shore Witness No. 1
6. Yasuhiro Ishimoto Moment
7. Richard Bram Street Photography
8. Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick The Apollo Prophecies
9. Stephen Gill Buried
10. Daido Moriyama Farewell Photography

Only one book on this list, The Apollo Prophecies, is by a "constructed tableaux" type of photographer, and their work is an unusual type for that ilk, witty and playful. Though most of the books on this list carry a lot of conceptual freight (the Moriyama work is a book about a book), the majority are from artists whose reputations are as hunter-gatherers.

Comments

[Paul Butzi]

One observation that springs to my mind is that Wall is a photographer in about the same sense that Andy Goldsworthy is a photographer. That is, he creates an art construct, and then photographs it, and to a certain degree the art construct is ephemeral and so the work is known mostly through the photographs of it, and not the art work directly.

So maybe that's why you don't find Wall books prominent in sales at Photo-Eye - you wouldn't expect to find Goldsworthy books there, either.