Peter Lik

Early life

Lik was born in Melbourne to Czech parents who immigrated to Australia after World War II. He took his first photo at the age of 8, after his parents gave him a Kodak Brownie box camera for his birthday. The shot was of a spider web in the garden of the family home. In his youth, Lik would bring his camera on family vacations and take photos of country scenes and the ocean. This practice continued when he took road trips out of the city and into the wilds of Australia, often accompanied by his friend and fellow photographer Michael Plumridge. As a photographer, Lik is self-taught, learning mostly by trial and error.

Photography

In 1984, Lik made his first trip to the United States, traveling around the country for a year in an old van. While in Alaska, he was introduced to panoramic cameras and learned about large format photography. Upon his return to Australia, he continued to experiment with the panoramic format. In 1989, Lik returned to the United States, undertaking a project to photograph landscapes in all 50 states. He sold some of the photos for use in calendars and as postcards. Photos from the project were later collected in his 2003 coffee table book, Spirit of America.

Lik spent the early 1990s working for the tourism department of Queensland, Australia, traveling through the Outback and photographing little-seen areas. In 1994, he moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where he opened Lik USA, which includes a facility for printing and framing his photos. He started his own publishing company, Lik Publishing, in the mid-1990s. The company has produced coffee table books, postcards and calendars of his work. In 1997, he published his first book, Australia: Images of a Timeless Land. In 2010, he published a 25-year retrospective coffee table book, 25th Anniversary Big Book, a 580-page leather-bound book weighing 40 pounds and containing over 500 images.

In December 2010, Lik sold a photograph for US$1 million to an anonymous collector, his highest-priced sale at that time. The photograph, titled "One", was shot on the banks of the Androscoggin River in New Hampshire. Lik has stated that only one print of the photo will ever be printed. According to BuzzFeed, as of 2011, the amount paid for "One" is the eleventh-highest price ever paid for a photo.

After winning the Art in Nature category of the 2010 Windland Smith Rice International Awards from Nature's Best Photography, "Ghost" (taken in Antelope Canyon, Arizona) was selected as part of a May 2011 exhibition of nature photography at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The photo was shot in a cave with the sunlight coming in through a hole above, creating a ghostly aura. His "Inner Peace" won a 2011 Windland Smith Rice International Award, and was on display at the Smithsonian from April through September 2012.

In December 2014, Lik reportedly sold a photograph titled "Phantom" to an anonymous bidder for $6.5 million, making it potentially the highest price paid for a photograph. Lik's claim has been greeted with much scepticism. Claims of the sale have never been proven and the mysterious buyer have never come forward.

Galleries

In 1997, Lik opened his first gallery, in Cairns, Australia. He opened his first US gallery in Lahaina, Hawaii, in 2003, and his first in Las Vegas in Caesars Palace in 2005. Peter Lik Fine Art Photography opened in the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan in November 2008, as part of the hotel's new high-end retail concourse. He went on to open another Manhattan gallery, in the SoHo neighborhood. Overall, he has four galleries in Las Vegas and nine others across the US.

Television

From the Edge with Peter Lik debuted on The Weather Channel on 31 March 2011, running for one season, with Lik as the host. The documentary series followed Lik on his journeys across the United States searching for and photographing attractive landscapes, such as the volcanoes of Hawaii, mountains of Montana, Arizona's Grand Canyon, and Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska. The show was The Weather Channel's first original programme.

Style

Lik is best known for his panoramic photos, and the large size and overall quality of his prints. He typically shoots panoramas with a Linhof 617 Technorama camera, using Fuji film. He also shoots digital, primarily using Phase One and Nikon cameras. He prints most of his photos on FujiFlex silver-halide paper, which increases the light sensitivity and glow, and helps accentuate the vibrant colors in the print.

Honors and awards