alone and not

Photographs from The Apartment here in San Francisco. I'm always totally mystified by the shopowners discretion over pricing these photographs and discerning which have worth. In the art market things are generally sold by size ratio for beginning and mid-carer artists (if one drawing is half the size of another and done by the same artist than the price is generally also half that of the other). Certainly composition and subject matter should be considered, but it also makes for awkward comparisons like the one in the pricing of these two photographs:

Take one. Worth $2
Take two. Worth $5

I'm unconvinced-- in fact, I often am. I talked to the pricer over his frustrating refusal to haggle for prices. Once when I pointed out that most of the photographs I wanted were out-of-focus, creased, small or just totally banal pictures he said to me that they were all a dollar regardless because one dollar was the general cost of preciousness and that every picture is precious to someone. Obviously I agreed with him, but found his logic faulty when some photographs were astronomically priced like these two, especially since they were all crammed together in a set of unsifted drawers.