The aesthetic standard

[cyrus]

Just curious - for those of you who are professional "fine art" photographers who sell your stuff through galleries etc.

What is your aesthetic standard?

Do you do whatever moves you, and just hope it sells? Or do you target a particular audience and adjust your photography according to what their tastes would be?(which could explain why we end up with so many photos of cala lillies, green peppers, mountains, barns, and cars rusting in open fields...)

It seems to me that a professional artist has to consider the fact that eventually, the product has to look good hanging over someone's sofa in the living room. And that requires making a lot of compromises.

[tim atherton]

"It is very regrettable that so many contemporary composers care so much about style and so little about idea. From this came such notions as the attempt to compose in ancient styles, using their mannerisms, limiting oneself to the little that one can thus express and to the insignificance of the musical configurations which can be produced with such equipment.

No one should give in to limitations other than those which are due to the limits of his talent. No violinist would play, even occasionally, with the wrong intonation to please lower musical tastes, no tight-rope walker would take steps in the wrong direction only for pleasure or for popular appeal, no chess master would make moves everyone could anticipate just to be agreeable (and thus allow his opponent to win), no mathematician would invent something new in mathematics just to flatter the masses who do not possess the specific mathematical way of thinking, and in the same manner, no artist, no poet, no philosopher and no musician whose thinking occurs in the highest sphere would degenerate into vulgarity in order to comply with a slogan such as "Art for All." Because if it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art."

Arnold Schoenberg

[Vaughn]

Not as wordy as Arnold, but I make prints that challenge and appeal to me -- and am glad that occasionally, others like them enough to buy them.

To add another layer to that, I photograph as a way to learn how to See -- and my prints are a way to share what I have learned so far. Trying to appease others wastes my time and theirs.

Vaughn

[Jon Shiu]

The main thing is, the photographer should love the image.

Jon

[Duane Polcou]

Photography is alot like stand up comedy - I have been pursuing both since the mid 1980's. The following applies to either:

If you produce material with subject matter that the majority immediately recognizes, understands, and even likes, you may find very fast acceptance and perhaps even income. But people are buying what your are selling, and that is all.
However, if you present your own voice, vision, or style that is uniquely yours, it may take YEARS to find an audience. Time often filled with more criticism and rejection than acceptance. But if you do find that audience, they are yours, because they are now relating to YOU, not just some product with your name on it. But be prepared for the dark side, young Skywalker...you may toil in obscurity your whole life.

I'm 48, and I'm certainly not what you would call extemely well known or well off in and from either medium. And more than a few times in my life I have walked away from things that might have made me so. They just seemed like crap (not that I haven't been in a few movies that didn't turn out to be the crap that crap calls crap ) Whatever. I get to talk about what I want to talk about, and shoot what I want to shoot. And as long as I can make some money and women still smile at me, I'm not changing.

Unless Speilberg calls and I become famous. Then I will sell you a print for $5000 of a homeless person holding a Calla lilly sitting in a rusted truck next to a barn on a sand dune in Yosemite.

[walter23]

J(which could explain why we end up with so many photos of cala lillies, green peppers, mountains, barns, and cars rusting in open fields...)

Man, nobody actually likes that stuff - it's just practice material

[walter23]

Then I will sell you a print for $5000 of a homeless person holding a Calla lilly sitting in a rusted truck next to a barn on a sand dune in Yosemite.

I think you've actually come up with something here. First one to successfully shoot it wins the prize for satirizing all of black and white photography in a single blow.

[Steven Barall]

It seems to me that the words professional and artist are diametrically opposed to each other. If you are a professional then you better care about what looks good over the sofa but if you're an artist you better not care. The whole privilege of being an artist is that you can just think about yourself all day long and if other people don't like it well then screw 'em.

There is no standard in aesthetics. How can there be? Besides, do you know how many different sofas there are out there? Think of all the styles and then the fabric choices available for the last hundred years and do the math. How are you going to intentionally make something to match someone's sofa?

In the end all you can really do is make things for yourself anyway and if someone wants what you make and it doesn't match the sofa they can just reupholster the damn thing.

[Michael Alpert]

Just curious - for those of you who are professional "fine art" photographers who sell your stuff through galleries etc.

What is your aesthetic standard?

Do you do whatever moves you, and just hope it sells? Or do you target a particular audience and adjust your photography according to what their tastes would be?(which could explain why we end up with so many photos of cala lillies, green peppers, mountains, barns, and cars rusting in open fields...)

It seems to me that a professional artist has to consider the fact that eventually, the product has to look good hanging over someone's sofa in the living room. And that requires making a lot of compromises.

Cyrus,

Your question is not about aesthetics or standards or art, but about marketing. Frankly, the "product" does not need "to look good" over a "sofa" or anywhere else. Your use of the term "professional" is nonsensical. You also use the term "artist" in a peculiar manner. Given your brightness and youth (I make an assumption here), I suggest a Zen-like approach: listen more; speak less.

[QT Luong]

Cyrus's question could be rephrased as "Do you shoot only those images that you think would sell ?", to which my answer is no, I shoot (and offer for purchase) what interests me. On the other hand, by a coincidence, most of the images that I shoot are "sellable" because I am not very interested in photographing ugliness and human suffering, and generally speaking anything "negative" (unlike for instance some photojournalists). If you offer a large variety of images, something is bound to match any sofa :-)