17 ms·

Artist faked being a billionaire to photograph New York City’s best views

281 points by endtwist 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
- fidesomnes 5y ago
  then don't?
chasedehan 5y ago
Wouldn’t these listings with pictures be available somewhere? This doesn’t sound too interesting to take pictures of homes listed for sale.
- thepasswordis 5y ago
  Well she did manage to get a few real estate listings to the top of hacker news.
  - genericone 5y ago
    Submarine marketing in action
- mburst 5y ago
  I thought the same thing, but I found it hard to find views of inside of the apartments I sampled from the article. A lot of the apartment websites just talked about the amenities. Some had a floor plan, but no pictures of what the inside actually looked like. For a $7mil+ condo I was expecting a little more, but I'm also not really the target audience of those condos either
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    Perhaps exclusivity is important to these customers. The real estate agent isn't posting images on the web for the mass market to see.
- farnsworth 5y ago
  Condos like this aren't really marketed in public. The exclusivity is part of the draw. It took some effort for her to look the part, they won't show them to just any rando who shows up.
- zorpner 5y ago
  This seems like it would be pretty easy to check before you posted. I just did -- they aren't.
thepasswordis 5y ago
She showed up to look at houses she had no intention of buying? Groundbreaking.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  By your definition, I could say about Newton's Principa Mathematica "He put some words on paper, groundbreaking" Or Linus "He put some bits on disk, groundbreaking" If you don't think her book is interesting, that's fine. But treating the methodology of how she got access to take the pictures as her sole output is lazy.
  - bawolff 5y ago
    And if someone wrote an article about linus with that headline, i would call the article stupid too.
  - oh_sigh 5y ago
    What was her methodology? > To pass as a convincing buyer, Schmied enlisted an antiquarian friend in Budapest to serve as her “husband,” and invented a 21-month-old baby, a personal chef, and a personal assistant named "Coco." She also blew the entire allowance from her residency at Dumbo’s Triangle Arts Association on manicures, makeup and clothes. Oh, but right...literally none of that was necessary: >...Surprisingly, none of the brokers asked for a credit check or proof of net worth. “I think at that level, they don’t bother with financial information,” she explains.
    - lanternfish 5y ago
      They didn't formally initiate a credit check or validate net worth, but I guarantee none of those brokers would give me the time of day if I called in right now. The theater is there to avoid the credit checks; the fact that they didn't check just means her plan worked.
      - oh_sigh 5y ago
        Why do you guarantee that? Have you ever tried? If she mortgaged her house and rented a $1M pearl necklace as part of her scheme, wouldn't you also be saying that that part of her plan worked? How do you determine what was necessary and what was just a waste of effort?
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
> They’re investments, not really meant for living in. They cast these huge shadows and block views—really change the skyline—just so they can stand empty. That is definitely one of the saddest parts for me. These billionaires (many of whom got their wealth in shady circumstances) are just using these condos to park their money. I may think NFTs are insane but at least when people with too much money park their wealth there they don't fuck up an entire city.
- dionidium 5y ago
  Counterpoint: these buildings are gorgeous and only enhance the city. Whenever I’m on 57th St I crane my neck to stare at them as I walk. Often, I’ll just stop for a while to look up in awe. They haven’t ruined anything. Moreover, even if you disagree about their beauty, so what? People should be free to build things — even things you don’t personally like!
  - hippira 5y ago
    Well you are free to do things but not at the cost of pollutions.
    - dionidium 5y ago
      Attempts to equate 1) zoning that prevents buildings one doesn't like; and 2) zoning that prevents sources of pollution is a fairly tired false equivocation.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    If you think that the buildings are ugly and damage the city, you'd be opposed to them. You like them so are not. As for "people should be free to build things", we decided over 100 years ago that wasn't the case. Not unrestrained by zoning laws and concern for the community.
    - dionidium 5y ago
      > we decided over 100 years ago that wasn't the case. That was an enormous mistake. It's the source of our housing shortage in high-demand areas and it's probably costing us literally trillions of dollars. [0] > If you think that the buildings are ugly and damage the city, you'd be opposed to them. You like them so are not. This is what you believe, not what I believe. In fact, I think people should be free to build buildings I think are ugly. [0] https://ggwash.org/view/42946/zoning-the-hidden-trillion-dollar-tax https://ggwash.org/view/42946/zoning-the-hidden-trillion-dol...
ragle 5y ago
Off topic, but perhaps of interest to anyone in Thailand who would like to experience similar views firsthand: https://www.booking.com/hotel/th/thirty-nine-boulevard-executive-residence.html https://www.booking.com/hotel/th/thirty-nine-boulevard-execu... The room my wife and I booked in 2019 offered a panoramic, bird's eye view of Bangkok's skyline from one of the higher floors in the building. Not bad at ~$90 / night at the time.
- jimmyed 5y ago
  Makes me want to take my few hundred thousands in retirement savings and live like a literal king in the 3rd world.
  - yarky 5y ago
    The dream of a literal gringo.
  - peteretep 5y ago
    So do? Plenty of companies hiring remote, and you will be far (far far far) from the first tech worker to move to South East Asia. Bangkok in particular has world class (and affordable) health care, food, and night life, and you’re only ever a couple of hours from the beach
    - juskrey 5y ago
      Thailand is fine until you get into trouble which requires authorities of any kind. It is what "3rd world" is all about.
      - peteretep 5y ago
        Unlike the US you can pay your way out of most infractions in Thailand for a fair price.
        juskrey 5y ago
Aunche 5y ago
> But despite the breathtaking views, Schmied says the multi-million-dollar condos were dishearteningly dull How many new apartments aren't dull? If you're spending $90 million on an apartment, the last thing you would want is for it to be in the style of some architect's avant-garde idea of beauty. If you want to add personality, you hire your own interior designers to find your own aesthetic.
- paxys 5y ago
  Exactly. Staged apartments are supposed to be dull. Prospective buyers should see a blank canvas, something as neutral and inoffensive as possible. And this applies to all sales, not just new apartments. There's a reason your realtor wants you to move all your stuff out before starting showings, no matter how much you think looking "homely" will help.
  - Scene_Cast2 5y ago
    A counterpoint - if having style increases the variance of liking the property, then with increased variance, there will be more people who really like the property (and thus be willing to pay more).
    - lesdeuxmagots 5y ago
      in such a niche market, you're better off creating competition among a few bidders, rather than putting off a significant % of the demand and relying on a person really liking the property to bid up the price. Put another way, 4 people moderately interested in the property will probably yield a higher price than 2 people that are very interested in the property. This is especially true in luxury real estate, where buyers go in looking to substantially change the property. They expect to bring in their own architects and designers. The staging is just a canvas.
  - LimaBearz 5y ago
    I can’t speak for the artist but I find these places quite drab because of the material choice and color. Grey/white marble, satin paint, light flooring, etc all make it dull to me. The problem I see though is to sell a unit at that those asking prices it’s not Home Depot marble or $2/f flooring it’s the crap Davis was sculpted from or whatever. That’s cool and all but yawn…
ampdepolymerase 5y ago
At least she did not manage to convince herself that she really is a billionaire heiress and start raising funds to build art museums.
- joshxyz 5y ago
  With her guts like that I think she can pull it off lol
IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
this is a huge argument for a real estate tax on non-primary residential property. Then, triple the tax its not rented during the year. do we want to allow wealthy princes to have a pied a terre on park ave ? OK. Let them pay in blood for the privilege. Of course, neither "progressives" or "conservatives" will be willing to threaten upper classes, real estate lobby, and political donors, with such a tax.. despite that the people that stand most to gain from this would be lower income AND first time owners ...who are voters in their own district!
- natchy 5y ago
  > this is a huge argument What was the argument. I didn’t see an argument. That fact that expensive apartments exist? > let them pay in blood for the privilege Why? Follow this thread of envy and it ends at a guillotine for anyone with wealth.
  - dgs_sgd 5y ago
    I think the parent comment's argument is that expensive apartments exist _and_ the vast majority of them are not used for living, but rather a place for the uber rich to park their money. From the article > “But these apartments are turnkey—the kind of person they’re trying to appeal to would never live there.”
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    There is investment of capital with positive value, like in startups. There is investment with (mostly( neutral value like gold There is investment with negative value where you buy a resource that everyone needs (like land) and then you hog it and prevent others from using it. For economy to work properly, the latter must be discouraged.
slowmotiony 5y ago
> But some said they always felt like they were privileged to see the city like this and felt like other people should be able to share in it. I cannot understand this line of thinking. I wonder if I can get a set of keys to the author's flat, so I can "share in it".
- deepstack 5y ago
  could just be different cultural background.
271828182846 5y ago
I really want to be a billionaire :( From today on I'll work more focused on my tickets to impress my boss!
- roveo 5y ago
  Yea, if you work really hard on those ticketses, someday, maybe, it's possible, he'll buy himself a flat like that.
  - 271828182846 5y ago
    why do I feel compelled to mention that I got the reference?
leejo 5y ago
> Only 1000 editions of Private Views were published For context this is towards the higher end of a standard print run in the photobook world. Most niche art/photo books will be printed in runs of only 50, 100, perhaps a few hundred, or at most 1,000 so "Only 1000 editions" is actually at the upper end and this is in no way "limited-edition". Unless the project goes viral it's unlikely the book itself will ever be sold out, such is the nature of the [lack of] demand for printed photobooks. So getting the project featured on various sites helps sell a few dozen here and there and works towards clawing back the initial investment. Clearly this was an expensive book to produce as single copies are in the range of €70, which is almost double what most niche photobooks sell for. I'm sure some of the subjects included in the project will be interested in copies, so there's a meta aspect there. If the book does sell out then the price of [secondhand] copies will increase above the original price, and you can find the value can double, or even increase by an order of magnitude. So a project about views you can't see unless you can afford them, becomes a book about views you can't see unless you can afford them which itself you can't afford. Another meta aspect.
- rocqua 5y ago
  Interesting, my first thought uppon reading this was "huh guess I can't buy this limited edition book" weird to see hoe wrong that was. I wonder how many lost sales thoughts like mine cause in the end
- biztos 5y ago
  Veering off topic but: there is a photography vlogger named Jared Polin who is producing a crowdfunded photo book and vlogging the process. It’s pretty fascinating if you’re casually interested in niche photo books. https://youtu.be/NloBEbN7qo8 https://youtu.be/NloBEbN7qo8
  - leejo 5y ago
    That video gives a good general idea of the costs involved in creating high quality niche photobooks. TL;DW way more expensive than most people realise. Very few photographers make any profit from books however, unless they are very well established. So the emphasis on profit in this video is rather misleading. There's also a big error/assumption from Jared when he covers why he is self-publishing rather than going to dedicated publisher in that he talks about the publisher giving "an $X thousand dollar advance" - this simply does not happen with photobook publishers, they usually just give you a certain number of copies of the print run to sell yourself. Even with 1.3million followers Jared probably wouldn't sell the 2,500 copies he is talking about printing here - this is why people go the Kickstarter route as you're pre-selling and can print to demand (plus a few copies on top). People don't really buy art, very few people are willing to drop $50+ on a photobook. A reason people do go to publishers is that they have the marketing clout to get your book into independent photobook shops, visible at photobook festivals, into award listings, featured in newspapers, online, etc. That's the hard part in self-publishing, and even established publishers go the Kickstarter route if they're unsure about the potential demand for a book.
himinlomax 5y ago
> “They all talked about having a golf simulator room—I’ve never heard of this thing before, but they all had it,” Why are wealthy people so much into golf? It seems like the dullest of activities. Is it just because other rich people say they like golf, and they're all such conformists?
- vanderZwan 5y ago
  "No, I won't play golf, it's playing marbles for people who don't want to bend down." - Youp van het Hek Jokes aside, it's because it is a way to signal that you are part of the in-group by sharing in a particular activity. And what better way than to make that the kind of activity that implicitly shows off your privilege? Golf involves a large amount of grass fields set aside and maintained just for you and your friends that can't be used for anything else, and spending time on it means you can afford to not use your time on something more productive. It's gatekeeping by its very nature. It's showing off how rich you are by being wasteful with two of the most precious resources available (I think there's even a name for this in the context of evolutionary biology). Having said that, I won't deny that it can be enjoyable in the same sense that going for a walk can be enjoyable. Going on (the equivalent of) a walk, together or alone, is a healthy thing to do. But as a social activity those other factors also play a role.
  - prox 5y ago
    I think it also allows for talking and doing business deals at the same time. Other sports don’t have that, unless it’s a board game.
    - vanderZwan 5y ago
      Agreed on the first part, that's where being a proxy for taking a walk comes into play. But regarding the second part: almost any lawn game would qualify for that, no? This could also be done over a game of horseshoes or Kubb. But that would miss all the other the gatekeeping, in-group signaling qualities mentioned. Although maybe croquet qualifies as posh enough... Now you're having me wonder if we can categorize lawn games by the classes that play them? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawn_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawn_game
Jabbles 5y ago
> Her limited-edition book Private Views: A High-rise Panorama of Manhattan I find it deliciously ironic that she would restrict access to her work like this - though perhaps there are other avenues not mentioned.
- yifanl 5y ago
  An unlimited print run isn't necessarily feasible for her, given that she isn't a billionaire.
wmu 5y ago
Love the whole project, she's my hero. :) I'm wondering how much did she pay in total to look like a billionaire.
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
There's an artist who's going places. Performance, photography, improvisation. She's amazing.
Tangokat 5y ago
In Copenhagen most apartments require people to live there. "Bopælspligt", residency requirement. As the owner of an apartment you are required to make sure someone lives there at least 180 days a year. The best places to live in a city should have people living there. It's really that simple.
- bonzini 5y ago
  Serious question: what do you do if you simply cannot find anyone who wants to live there? For example if you inherited a flat when the owners died, and you already have a place to live in?
  - Tangokat 5y ago
    In the extreme case the municipality will rent it out for you. This almost never happens. It's really not hard to find people in the city who want to rent apartments.
- pkphilip 5y ago
  It is actually a pretty smart way to ensure that there is some occupancy in all building blocks (which could reduce crime) and also it brings down the overall rental costs.

281 points by endtwist 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

fidesomnes 5y ago
then don't?

chasedehan 5y ago

Wouldn’t these listings with pictures be available somewhere? This doesn’t sound too interesting to take pictures of homes listed for sale.

thepasswordis 5y ago
Well she did manage to get a few real estate listings to the top of hacker news.
- genericone 5y ago
  Submarine marketing in action
mburst 5y ago
I thought the same thing, but I found it hard to find views of inside of the apartments I sampled from the article. A lot of the apartment websites just talked about the amenities. Some had a floor plan, but no pictures of what the inside actually looked like. For a $7mil+ condo I was expecting a little more, but I'm also not really the target audience of those condos either
- wolverine876 5y ago
  Perhaps exclusivity is important to these customers. The real estate agent isn't posting images on the web for the mass market to see.
farnsworth 5y ago
Condos like this aren't really marketed in public. The exclusivity is part of the draw. It took some effort for her to look the part, they won't show them to just any rando who shows up.
zorpner 5y ago
This seems like it would be pretty easy to check before you posted. I just did -- they aren't.

thepasswordis 5y ago

She showed up to look at houses she had no intention of buying? Groundbreaking.

HWR_14 5y ago
By your definition, I could say about Newton's Principa Mathematica "He put some words on paper, groundbreaking" Or Linus "He put some bits on disk, groundbreaking" If you don't think her book is interesting, that's fine. But treating the methodology of how she got access to take the pictures as her sole output is lazy.
- bawolff 5y ago
  And if someone wrote an article about linus with that headline, i would call the article stupid too.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  What was her methodology? > To pass as a convincing buyer, Schmied enlisted an antiquarian friend in Budapest to serve as her “husband,” and invented a 21-month-old baby, a personal chef, and a personal assistant named "Coco." She also blew the entire allowance from her residency at Dumbo’s Triangle Arts Association on manicures, makeup and clothes. Oh, but right...literally none of that was necessary: >...Surprisingly, none of the brokers asked for a credit check or proof of net worth. “I think at that level, they don’t bother with financial information,” she explains.
  - lanternfish 5y ago
    They didn't formally initiate a credit check or validate net worth, but I guarantee none of those brokers would give me the time of day if I called in right now. The theater is there to avoid the credit checks; the fact that they didn't check just means her plan worked.
    - oh_sigh 5y ago
      Why do you guarantee that? Have you ever tried? If she mortgaged her house and rented a $1M pearl necklace as part of her scheme, wouldn't you also be saying that that part of her plan worked? How do you determine what was necessary and what was just a waste of effort?

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

> They’re investments, not really meant for living in. They cast these huge shadows and block views—really change the skyline—just so they can stand empty. That is definitely one of the saddest parts for me. These billionaires (many of whom got their wealth in shady circumstances) are just using these condos to park their money. I may think NFTs are insane but at least when people with too much money park their wealth there they don't fuck up an entire city.

dionidium 5y ago
Counterpoint: these buildings are gorgeous and only enhance the city. Whenever I’m on 57th St I crane my neck to stare at them as I walk. Often, I’ll just stop for a while to look up in awe. They haven’t ruined anything. Moreover, even if you disagree about their beauty, so what? People should be free to build things — even things you don’t personally like!
- hippira 5y ago
  Well you are free to do things but not at the cost of pollutions.
  - dionidium 5y ago
    Attempts to equate 1) zoning that prevents buildings one doesn't like; and 2) zoning that prevents sources of pollution is a fairly tired false equivocation.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  If you think that the buildings are ugly and damage the city, you'd be opposed to them. You like them so are not. As for "people should be free to build things", we decided over 100 years ago that wasn't the case. Not unrestrained by zoning laws and concern for the community.
  - dionidium 5y ago
    > we decided over 100 years ago that wasn't the case. That was an enormous mistake. It's the source of our housing shortage in high-demand areas and it's probably costing us literally trillions of dollars. [0] > If you think that the buildings are ugly and damage the city, you'd be opposed to them. You like them so are not. This is what you believe, not what I believe. In fact, I think people should be free to build buildings I think are ugly. [0] https://ggwash.org/view/42946/zoning-the-hidden-trillion-dollar-tax https://ggwash.org/view/42946/zoning-the-hidden-trillion-dol...

ragle 5y ago

Off topic, but perhaps of interest to anyone in Thailand who would like to experience similar views firsthand: https://www.booking.com/hotel/th/thirty-nine-boulevard-executive-residence.html https://www.booking.com/hotel/th/thirty-nine-boulevard-execu... The room my wife and I booked in 2019 offered a panoramic, bird's eye view of Bangkok's skyline from one of the higher floors in the building. Not bad at ~$90 / night at the time.

jimmyed 5y ago
Makes me want to take my few hundred thousands in retirement savings and live like a literal king in the 3rd world.
- yarky 5y ago
  The dream of a literal gringo.
- peteretep 5y ago
  So do? Plenty of companies hiring remote, and you will be far (far far far) from the first tech worker to move to South East Asia. Bangkok in particular has world class (and affordable) health care, food, and night life, and you’re only ever a couple of hours from the beach
  - juskrey 5y ago
    Thailand is fine until you get into trouble which requires authorities of any kind. It is what "3rd world" is all about.
    - peteretep 5y ago
      Unlike the US you can pay your way out of most infractions in Thailand for a fair price.
      - juskrey 5y ago

Aunche 5y ago

> But despite the breathtaking views, Schmied says the multi-million-dollar condos were dishearteningly dull How many new apartments aren't dull? If you're spending $90 million on an apartment, the last thing you would want is for it to be in the style of some architect's avant-garde idea of beauty. If you want to add personality, you hire your own interior designers to find your own aesthetic.

paxys 5y ago
Exactly. Staged apartments are supposed to be dull. Prospective buyers should see a blank canvas, something as neutral and inoffensive as possible. And this applies to all sales, not just new apartments. There's a reason your realtor wants you to move all your stuff out before starting showings, no matter how much you think looking "homely" will help.
- Scene_Cast2 5y ago
  A counterpoint - if having style increases the variance of liking the property, then with increased variance, there will be more people who really like the property (and thus be willing to pay more).
  - lesdeuxmagots 5y ago
    in such a niche market, you're better off creating competition among a few bidders, rather than putting off a significant % of the demand and relying on a person really liking the property to bid up the price. Put another way, 4 people moderately interested in the property will probably yield a higher price than 2 people that are very interested in the property. This is especially true in luxury real estate, where buyers go in looking to substantially change the property. They expect to bring in their own architects and designers. The staging is just a canvas.
- LimaBearz 5y ago
  I can’t speak for the artist but I find these places quite drab because of the material choice and color. Grey/white marble, satin paint, light flooring, etc all make it dull to me. The problem I see though is to sell a unit at that those asking prices it’s not Home Depot marble or $2/f flooring it’s the crap Davis was sculpted from or whatever. That’s cool and all but yawn…

ampdepolymerase 5y ago

At least she did not manage to convince herself that she really is a billionaire heiress and start raising funds to build art museums.

joshxyz 5y ago
With her guts like that I think she can pull it off lol

IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago

this is a huge argument for a real estate tax on non-primary residential property. Then, triple the tax its not rented during the year. do we want to allow wealthy princes to have a pied a terre on park ave ? OK. Let them pay in blood for the privilege. Of course, neither "progressives" or "conservatives" will be willing to threaten upper classes, real estate lobby, and political donors, with such a tax.. despite that the people that stand most to gain from this would be lower income AND first time owners ...who are voters in their own district!

natchy 5y ago
> this is a huge argument What was the argument. I didn’t see an argument. That fact that expensive apartments exist? > let them pay in blood for the privilege Why? Follow this thread of envy and it ends at a guillotine for anyone with wealth.
- dgs_sgd 5y ago
  I think the parent comment's argument is that expensive apartments exist _and_ the vast majority of them are not used for living, but rather a place for the uber rich to park their money. From the article > “But these apartments are turnkey—the kind of person they’re trying to appeal to would never live there.”
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  There is investment of capital with positive value, like in startups. There is investment with (mostly( neutral value like gold There is investment with negative value where you buy a resource that everyone needs (like land) and then you hog it and prevent others from using it. For economy to work properly, the latter must be discouraged.

slowmotiony 5y ago

> But some said they always felt like they were privileged to see the city like this and felt like other people should be able to share in it. I cannot understand this line of thinking. I wonder if I can get a set of keys to the author's flat, so I can "share in it".

deepstack 5y ago
could just be different cultural background.

271828182846 5y ago

I really want to be a billionaire :( From today on I'll work more focused on my tickets to impress my boss!

roveo 5y ago
Yea, if you work really hard on those ticketses, someday, maybe, it's possible, he'll buy himself a flat like that.
- 271828182846 5y ago
  why do I feel compelled to mention that I got the reference?

leejo 5y ago

> Only 1000 editions of Private Views were published For context this is towards the higher end of a standard print run in the photobook world. Most niche art/photo books will be printed in runs of only 50, 100, perhaps a few hundred, or at most 1,000 so "Only 1000 editions" is actually at the upper end and this is in no way "limited-edition". Unless the project goes viral it's unlikely the book itself will ever be sold out, such is the nature of the [lack of] demand for printed photobooks. So getting the project featured on various sites helps sell a few dozen here and there and works towards clawing back the initial investment. Clearly this was an expensive book to produce as single copies are in the range of €70, which is almost double what most niche photobooks sell for. I'm sure some of the subjects included in the project will be interested in copies, so there's a meta aspect there. If the book does sell out then the price of [secondhand] copies will increase above the original price, and you can find the value can double, or even increase by an order of magnitude. So a project about views you can't see unless you can afford them, becomes a book about views you can't see unless you can afford them which itself you can't afford. Another meta aspect.

rocqua 5y ago
Interesting, my first thought uppon reading this was "huh guess I can't buy this limited edition book" weird to see hoe wrong that was. I wonder how many lost sales thoughts like mine cause in the end
biztos 5y ago
Veering off topic but: there is a photography vlogger named Jared Polin who is producing a crowdfunded photo book and vlogging the process. It’s pretty fascinating if you’re casually interested in niche photo books. https://youtu.be/NloBEbN7qo8 https://youtu.be/NloBEbN7qo8
- leejo 5y ago
  That video gives a good general idea of the costs involved in creating high quality niche photobooks. TL;DW way more expensive than most people realise. Very few photographers make any profit from books however, unless they are very well established. So the emphasis on profit in this video is rather misleading. There's also a big error/assumption from Jared when he covers why he is self-publishing rather than going to dedicated publisher in that he talks about the publisher giving "an $X thousand dollar advance" - this simply does not happen with photobook publishers, they usually just give you a certain number of copies of the print run to sell yourself. Even with 1.3million followers Jared probably wouldn't sell the 2,500 copies he is talking about printing here - this is why people go the Kickstarter route as you're pre-selling and can print to demand (plus a few copies on top). People don't really buy art, very few people are willing to drop $50+ on a photobook. A reason people do go to publishers is that they have the marketing clout to get your book into independent photobook shops, visible at photobook festivals, into award listings, featured in newspapers, online, etc. That's the hard part in self-publishing, and even established publishers go the Kickstarter route if they're unsure about the potential demand for a book.

himinlomax 5y ago

> “They all talked about having a golf simulator room—I’ve never heard of this thing before, but they all had it,” Why are wealthy people so much into golf? It seems like the dullest of activities. Is it just because other rich people say they like golf, and they're all such conformists?

vanderZwan 5y ago
"No, I won't play golf, it's playing marbles for people who don't want to bend down." - Youp van het Hek Jokes aside, it's because it is a way to signal that you are part of the in-group by sharing in a particular activity. And what better way than to make that the kind of activity that implicitly shows off your privilege? Golf involves a large amount of grass fields set aside and maintained just for you and your friends that can't be used for anything else, and spending time on it means you can afford to not use your time on something more productive. It's gatekeeping by its very nature. It's showing off how rich you are by being wasteful with two of the most precious resources available (I think there's even a name for this in the context of evolutionary biology). Having said that, I won't deny that it can be enjoyable in the same sense that going for a walk can be enjoyable. Going on (the equivalent of) a walk, together or alone, is a healthy thing to do. But as a social activity those other factors also play a role.
- prox 5y ago
  I think it also allows for talking and doing business deals at the same time. Other sports don’t have that, unless it’s a board game.
  - vanderZwan 5y ago
    Agreed on the first part, that's where being a proxy for taking a walk comes into play. But regarding the second part: almost any lawn game would qualify for that, no? This could also be done over a game of horseshoes or Kubb. But that would miss all the other the gatekeeping, in-group signaling qualities mentioned. Although maybe croquet qualifies as posh enough... Now you're having me wonder if we can categorize lawn games by the classes that play them? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawn_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawn_game

Jabbles 5y ago

> Her limited-edition book Private Views: A High-rise Panorama of Manhattan I find it deliciously ironic that she would restrict access to her work like this - though perhaps there are other avenues not mentioned.

yifanl 5y ago
An unlimited print run isn't necessarily feasible for her, given that she isn't a billionaire.

wmu 5y ago

Love the whole project, she's my hero. :) I'm wondering how much did she pay in total to look like a billionaire.

JoeAltmaier 5y ago

There's an artist who's going places. Performance, photography, improvisation. She's amazing.

Tangokat 5y ago

In Copenhagen most apartments require people to live there. "Bopælspligt", residency requirement. As the owner of an apartment you are required to make sure someone lives there at least 180 days a year. The best places to live in a city should have people living there. It's really that simple.

bonzini 5y ago
Serious question: what do you do if you simply cannot find anyone who wants to live there? For example if you inherited a flat when the owners died, and you already have a place to live in?
- Tangokat 5y ago
  In the extreme case the municipality will rent it out for you. This almost never happens. It's really not hard to find people in the city who want to rent apartments.
pkphilip 5y ago
It is actually a pretty smart way to ensure that there is some occupancy in all building blocks (which could reduce crime) and also it brings down the overall rental costs.