all. These are the only prints.”
“You won’t keep a set?”
Ilkka continued to stare at the table. “That time is gone,” he said at last. “I am not sorry: There were a lot of evil things, and I do not need help remembering them. These will be the only prints.”
It was a good strategy. Most photographers make money by selling multiple prints run from a negative or, these days, a digital image. But the priciest photos, the ones that go for the big bucks at auction or through private transactions—those are often old daguerreotypes or ambrotypes, images produced in a one-off format, because that was pretty much the only game in town, back in the nineteenth century. Destroying original negs creates the kind of artificial scarcity that keeps the art world in business.
It would be possible to duplicate Ilkka’s pictures, of course, if you could get your hands on them. Still, to get anything approaching the quality of these originals would be almost impossible, and someone with a good eye—me, for instance—would recognize the difference between a first-generation print and one made from a copy neg.
That’s leaving out the law-enforcement issues that would emerge if these images ever hit the Internet. Whatever he’d been like in the winter of 1991, these days Ilkka didn’t seem like a guy who’d want to chance scandal and possible prison time. I wondered how much he was asking for the sequence.
And I wondered why he was selling it now.
Ilkka’s cell phone chimed. He answered it and walked into the room with the Chromira printer, talking quietly in Finnish. When he was gone, I quickly stepped to the map chest and slid open the top drawer, looking for a sixth print. It was empty. So was the next drawer and all the rest. Unless he had extra copies stashed elsewhere, those five prints were it. I did a swift reconnoiter of the room but didn’t see anyplace he might have stored them flat. Rolled up, they might have been anywhere, but I doubted Ilkka would be so cavalier with his trophies.
I searched inside a few more drawers—nothing but old contact sheets and film paraphernalia—then wandered to a counter strewn with CDs by Can, Kraftwerk, Alan Hovhaness, along with a bunch of dour-looking Scandinavian composers I’d never heard of. The guy definitely suffered from Stockhausen Syndrome.
But there were some old cassette tapes, too, with handmade labels sporting xeroxed images of inverted crosses and guys in corpse-paint makeup, the band names scrawled in Magic Marker: Sarcófago, Celtic Frost, Viðar, Bathory. I was vaguely aware of Bathory, and I knew Viðar only because they were Scandinavian, and Ilkka had shot their first album cover.
I glanced at the Celtic Frost tapes, picked up one with the word Blot penciled on its cardboard insert. Ilkka was still occupied with his phone call, so I stuck it in my pocket, grabbing two more at random. I don’t even own a cassette player, but what the hell. A minute later he walked back into the room.
“That was my wife. Oskari, our little boy, is feeling worse, I have to get him at school. She’s in a meeting and can’t leave.”
He hurriedly covered the prints with their protective sheaths, replaced them in the map chest, and locked it. We both peeled off our white cotton gloves and retraced our steps back upstairs.
“I’m not sure how long this will take.” His face looked drawn. “It’s the flu. She worries every time Oskari gets a fever. If he’s really sick, I may have to take him to the doctor.”
He seemed more disturbed than I’d expect someone to be over a kid with a cold, but it was no skin off my nose. “That’s okay. I think I’ve got enough to report back to Anton.”
“If you have any questions, we can talk about it this evening at dinner. He will be anxious to finish the deal; you might even have the chance to meet him.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, sure. Look, can I ask you one thing? How much are you asking for these?”
He named a
“You won’t keep a set?”
Ilkka continued to stare at the table. “That time is gone,” he said at last. “I am not sorry: There were a lot of evil things, and I do not need help remembering them. These will be the only prints.”
It was a good strategy. Most photographers make money by selling multiple prints run from a negative or, these days, a digital image. But the priciest photos, the ones that go for the big bucks at auction or through private transactions—those are often old daguerreotypes or ambrotypes, images produced in a one-off format, because that was pretty much the only game in town, back in the nineteenth century. Destroying original negs creates the kind of artificial scarcity that keeps the art world in business.
It would be possible to duplicate Ilkka’s pictures, of course, if you could get your hands on them. Still, to get anything approaching the quality of these originals would be almost impossible, and someone with a good eye—me, for instance—would recognize the difference between a first-generation print and one made from a copy neg.
That’s leaving out the law-enforcement issues that would emerge if these images ever hit the Internet. Whatever he’d been like in the winter of 1991, these days Ilkka didn’t seem like a guy who’d want to chance scandal and possible prison time. I wondered how much he was asking for the sequence.
And I wondered why he was selling it now.
Ilkka’s cell phone chimed. He answered it and walked into the room with the Chromira printer, talking quietly in Finnish. When he was gone, I quickly stepped to the map chest and slid open the top drawer, looking for a sixth print. It was empty. So was the next drawer and all the rest. Unless he had extra copies stashed elsewhere, those five prints were it. I did a swift reconnoiter of the room but didn’t see anyplace he might have stored them flat. Rolled up, they might have been anywhere, but I doubted Ilkka would be so cavalier with his trophies.
I searched inside a few more drawers—nothing but old contact sheets and film paraphernalia—then wandered to a counter strewn with CDs by Can, Kraftwerk, Alan Hovhaness, along with a bunch of dour-looking Scandinavian composers I’d never heard of. The guy definitely suffered from Stockhausen Syndrome.
But there were some old cassette tapes, too, with handmade labels sporting xeroxed images of inverted crosses and guys in corpse-paint makeup, the band names scrawled in Magic Marker: Sarcófago, Celtic Frost, Viðar, Bathory. I was vaguely aware of Bathory, and I knew Viðar only because they were Scandinavian, and Ilkka had shot their first album cover.
I glanced at the Celtic Frost tapes, picked up one with the word Blot penciled on its cardboard insert. Ilkka was still occupied with his phone call, so I stuck it in my pocket, grabbing two more at random. I don’t even own a cassette player, but what the hell. A minute later he walked back into the room.
“That was my wife. Oskari, our little boy, is feeling worse, I have to get him at school. She’s in a meeting and can’t leave.”
He hurriedly covered the prints with their protective sheaths, replaced them in the map chest, and locked it. We both peeled off our white cotton gloves and retraced our steps back upstairs.
“I’m not sure how long this will take.” His face looked drawn. “It’s the flu. She worries every time Oskari gets a fever. If he’s really sick, I may have to take him to the doctor.”
He seemed more disturbed than I’d expect someone to be over a kid with a cold, but it was no skin off my nose. “That’s okay. I think I’ve got enough to report back to Anton.”
“If you have any questions, we can talk about it this evening at dinner. He will be anxious to finish the deal; you might even have the chance to meet him.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, sure. Look, can I ask you one thing? How much are you asking for these?”
He named a
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