So begins Stephen Holden's (negative) review in the New York Times today of a new documentary about the estate of photographer O. Winston Link, who died in 2001. Link's (much younger) wife was convicted of stealing 1,400 photographs and other assets valued at more than $1 million and served a five-year sentence. She maintains the photographs don’t exist, but she was sent back to prison after she was caught trying to sell 31 of the missing prints on eBay in 2003. "The scandal, of course, only increased the value of Link’s work," notes Holden, who concludes: "A sad commentary on the inflated art market and its vulture mentality camouflaged by highbrow trappings, the movie comes across as an example of the very exploitation it observes with a raised eyebrow."
Link is best-known for his black-and-white photographs of the waning days of the steam locomotive. Here is a link to the O. Winston Link Museum in Roanoke. Here is a link to some other reviews of the film at metacritic.
