E-Photo
Issue #19  9/15/2000
 
Other News

By Alex Novak

The New York Museum of Modern Art has settled with its 20-week strike with its union.  The strike ended after a 15-hour marathon negotiation, which led both sides to claim victory, but it doesn’t look like the museum has much to celebrate about…The International Center of Photography's 94th street facility has been sold for $17.5 million and is being turned back into a home.  The center is moving its operation to ICP Midtown at Sixth Avenue and 43rd Street, which is currently undergoing renovations and is scheduled to reopen with four exhibitions: "Reflections in a Glass Eye: Works from the ICP Collection," "Annie Leibovitz: Women," "Lorie Novak: Collected Visions" and "New Histories of Photography 1: Daguerreotypomania," all running Nov. 3-Dec. 31… An attempt to sell an autopsy picture and crime scene photographs of three slain boys has prompted eBay to change its policy on graphic photos.  Under the new policy, “eBay may in its discretion, remove items and refund listing fees when the item or description graphically portrays violence or victims of violence, and lacks substantial social, artistic or political value. For example, eBay may disallow sales of explicit crime scene photographs or morgue photos, while permitting military documentaries or photographs of war victims. Further, eBay will remove any listing and suspend the users involved where it appears that a person convicted of a violent felony is attempting to use eBay (directly or through another person) to benefit financially from his or her criminal notoriety.”  The change came after a mother saw her dead eight-year old son in a picture being sold on eBay and after the national victims' rights organization Parents of Murdered Children complained.

Novak has over 47 years experience in the photography-collecting arena. He is a long-time member and formally board member of the Daguerreian Society, and, when it was still functioning, he was a member of the American Photographic Historical Society (APHS). He organized the 2016 19th-century Photography Show and Conference for the Daguerreian Society. He is also a long-time member of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers, or AIPAD. Novak has been a member of the board of the nonprofit Photo Review, which publishes both the Photo Review and the Photograph Collector, and is currently on the Photo Review's advisory board. He was a founding member of the Getty Museum Photography Council. He is author of French 19th-Century Master Photographers: Life into Art.

Novak has had photography articles and columns published in several newspapers, the American Photographic Historical Society newsletter, the Photograph Collector and the Daguerreian Society newsletter. He writes and publishes the E-Photo Newsletter, the largest circulation newsletter in the field. Novak is also president and owner of Contemporary Works/Vintage Works, a private photography dealer, which sells by appointment and has sold at exhibit shows, such as AIPAD New York and Miami, Art Chicago, Classic Photography LA, Photo LA, Paris Photo, The 19th-century Photography Show, Art Miami, etc.