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"Is it possible to create a new photograph from an old negative? That\u2019s the question at the center of a bitter legal dispute between collector Jonathan Sobel and photographer William Eggleston. On April 4, Sobel filed a complaint against the artist in federal court, alleging that Eggleston diluted the value of Sobel\u2019s collection by printing larger, digital versions of some of his best-known works and then selling them for record prices at Christie\u2019s.\u201CThe commercial value of art is scarcity, and if you make more of something, it becomes less valuable,\u201D said Sobel, who owns 190 Eggleston works worth an estimated $3 to $5 million. \u201CI feel betrayed.\u201D The Whitney Museum trustee and former Goldman Sachs executive is a committed collector of Eggleston\u2019s work: He frequently lends photographs from his collection to museum exhibitions and even helped finance the photographer\u2019s 2008 retrospective. But if he had known Eggleston would someday make digital reprints of works from his collection, he never would have bought them in the first place, he said.When Eggleston decided to print his photographs in limited editions in the 1970s and 1980s, digital technology didn\u2019t exist yet. But according to Eggleston\u2019s lawyer, John Cahill, the artist has the right to explore this new medium today \u2014 even if he is only using it to make larger versions of earlier, limited-edition photographs. \u201CA limited edition is a collection of physical objects, but the artist owns the copyright for the image itself,\u201D Cahill told ARTINFO. \u201CThere is no law that prevents an artist from creating additional works with the same image.\u201D (Cahill also noted that with few exceptions, Eggleston almost never sold his works as  'limited editions' per se,  but rather would print images depending on his resources and artistic inclination at the time.) &amp;nbsp;The Christie\u2019s sale featured 36 poster-size, digital prints of images that Eggleston had shot in the Mississippi Delta more than 30 years ago. Some, like a wistful image of a car trunk, were created from negatives he had never printed before, while others were based on iconic works, such as the famous \u201CMemphis (Tricycle).\u201D Sobel owns a 17-inch version of that photograph \u2014 he told the Wall Street Journal he bought it two years ago from a collector for roughly $250,000. Last month, the 5-foot-wide digital version sold at Christie\u2019s for $578,500, the highest price ever paid at auction for an Eggleston photograph. By the time the sale was over, digital versions accounted for seven of the artist\u2019s top 10 prices.It is, of course, too soon to determine whether the large-format prints will indeed decrease the value of the original photographs, as Sobel fears. On Thursday, one of the original dye transfer prints of \u201CUntitled (Peaches)\u201D \u2014 a 1973 photograph of a painted \u201CPeaches\u201D sign perched on a tin roof \u2014 sold at Christie\u2019s for $242,500, well over the high estimate of $90,000. (The five-foot digital version sold in March for $422,500.) Seven of 15 Eggleston prints in Thursday\u2019s sale, however, were withdrawn before the sale.This isn\u2019t the last we\u2019ll be seeing of these digital images either. In October, Cheim &amp;amp; Read will present a selection at the next Frieze Art Fair in London. Gagosian Beverly Hills is also planning an exhibition of the digital works.Though it\u2019s too early to discern the market outcome, lawyers say Sobel\u2019s case hinges on a different question: Are the digital works different from the original prints? In a statement, Christie\u2019s called the digitals \u201Ca completely new addition\u201D to Eggleston\u2019s oeuvre; the house's photography specialist told PDN they were marketed as works of contemporary art designed to appeal to contemporary art collectors, not photography traditionalists. But Sobel\u2019s lawyer disagrees: \u201CThey think making it bigger makes it different, but that\u2019s not true,\u201D said Thomas&amp;nbsp;Danziger.Photography dealers have a different take. \u201CClients are cognizant of the difference between dye transfer prints and digital prints. They have a very different appeal,\u201D Julie Saul, president of an eponymous photography gallery in Chelsea, told ARTINFO. \u201CEggleston's work is all about color, and the dyes have a richness you don't get in other kinds of prints. It is my understanding that the dye transfer process is the most archival of the color processes.\u201DPerhaps Sobel\u2019s claim is more interesting as an ontological question than a legal one. What does it mean to create a new work of art in the digital age? According to Virginia Rutledge, an art historian and consultant to Eggleston\u2019s legal counsel, the vintage and digital prints \u201Care entirely different, as objects \u2014 viewers experience these prints quite differently, and the market clearly has placed a high value on both experiences.\u201D In today's plugged-in world, audiences frequently see images of artwork reproduced online and believe \u201Cthey've 'got it,' but that is reducing the artwork to merely an image. These new prints are an affirmation that the particular tangible expression of an idea, the physical life of an artwork, has a unique power. [content:advertisement-center]"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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