buying public thoughts on photographs

[JessJ]

Hello everyone,
Honestly I don't really know how to put it in a more correct question but here it goes: Does the buying public in general prefers photographs of film based or digital one? Does the means matters to them? Thanks in advance

JessJ

[Ted Harris]

The best way to get an answer to this question is to visit galleries that specialize in photography and/or visit large shows aimed at collectors such as Photo LA or Paris Photo. Generally speaking, gallery owners who do not show the work of any artists who print digitally tend to downgrade digital prints and those who do show digital work don't. The number who do not show it continues to drop.

I go to Photo LA every year and do an informal survey of the amount of digital v. traditional prints on display by the hundreds of galleries in attendance. Last year the color work was easily 98% digital and the black and white work was over 50% digital ... this, of course, is a reference to contemporary work on display. Other interesting observations:

1) As each year passes there are fewer piece hanging that go into detail about the printing process.

2) Prices variations are much more a function of the artist than the way the work was produced. Lot's of digital prints are priced higher than traditionally processed prints.

3) The buying public seems to care a lot less than gallery owners and photographers.

I have not been to Paris Photo in a few years but friends who go every year tell me the trends are the same.

[David Spivak-Focus Magazine]

Hello everyone,
Honestly I don't really know how to put it in a more correct question but here it goes: Does the buying public in general prefers photographs of film based or digital one? Does the means matters to them? Thanks in advance

JessJ

While there are definitely some collectors who would not buy digital because they are mis-informed about the longevity of digital prints, I've sold photography before acting as a gallery at Photo SF twice and Photo NY twice and the collectors that I met didn't care about the printing process, or how well known or unknown the photographer was, they only cared about the price and the asthetic value of the image...plus whether or not it came framed. That was a HUGE deal.

[Kirk Gittings]

My sales have not diminished since starting to print some of my work digitally. A couple of old collectors baulked until they saw the prints and found out that museums were buying my digital prints.

People in my experience by images and assume that I know what I am doing technically. Whether silver, Ilfochrome, pigment ink whatever, I offer an unconditional replacement guarantee for fading staining etc.

A lesson from a close friend. His prints digital prints were not selling so he went through the time and effort to learn to print P/P from enlarged digital negatives, because he thought P/P prints would be more "collectable". They still don't sell.......because the images are still boring.

[SamReeves]

3) The buying public seems to care a lot less than gallery owners and photographers..

This is the honest truth. The average joe who's picking up a single or mounted print doesn't give a hoot if it's digital paper or RA-4. I'm near the point of giving up RA-4 as a result.

[paulr]

I don't know if there's a buying public. If you're talking about laypeople who walk into an arts and crafts fair and buy something to decorate a wall, then i doubt many of them are even asking how it was made.

If you're looking at photography collectors who buy from art dealers, then there's no one answer. There are as many as there are eccentric people with money to burn who collect art. Some will only collect gum bichromate prints, some only huge color prints, some only black and white nudes, some only work done in the 1890s. If you want ten different answers then ask ten collectors.

From what I see in New York, the only galleries that make a big deal about process are the ones that sell very traditional, conservative images, presumeably to more conservative collectors.

[Bruce Watson]

I agree with Paul -- there probably isn't much of a buying public for you to survey. Collectors seem to collect for their own individual purposes; there is more diversity and less commonality than you'd expect from a "buying public."

I can say this much. As both a creator of photographs and a (very modest) collector, when I buy photographs I'm entirely interested in the image. If the image doesn't resonate with me there's no point in learning anything about how it was made. If the image does resonate with me, I don't really care how it was made -- only if I can afford it. As a result I've got a motley collection running the range from an IRIS dye ink B&W print to a dye transfer color print, with silver gelatin, platinum, and pigment ink prints in between. I love them all or I wouldn't have them.

[QT Luong]

3) The buying public seems to care a lot less than gallery owners and photographers.


Especially photographers. I almost never get any question about the process from buyers.

[Peter Lewin]

The best way to get an answer to this question is to visit galleries that specialize in photography and/or visit large shows aimed at collectors such as Photo LA or Paris Photo. Generally speaking, gallery owners who do not show the work of any artists who print digitally tend to downgrade digital prints and those who do show digital work don't. The number who do not show it continues to drop.

I go to Photo LA every year and do an informal survey of the amount of digital v. traditional prints on display by the hundreds of galleries in attendance. Last year the color work was easily 98% digital and the black and white work was over 50% digital ... this, of course, is a reference to contemporary work on display. Other interesting observations:

1) As each year passes there are fewer piece hanging that go into detail about the printing process.

2) Prices variations are much more a function of the artist than the way the work was produced. Lot's of digital prints are priced higher than traditionally processed prints.

3) The buying public seems to care a lot less than gallery owners and photographers.

I have not been to Paris Photo in a few years but friends who go every year tell me the trends are the same.
All of Ted's comments apply equally to the annual AIPAD show in NYC, which is by far the largest show by gallery owners in the NY area. Of his three points, the only one I would add to slightly is the first: gallery owners seem to have a variety of nicer-sounding labels for digital prints, "glicee print" is a common description, as is "pigment print."

[domenico Foschi]

95% of my clients, when informed that I do digital and silver, ask for silver.

[David Spivak-Focus Magazine]

I don't know if there's a buying public. If you're talking about laypeople who walk into an arts and crafts fair and buy something to decorate a wall, then i doubt many of them are even asking how it was made.

If you're looking at photography collectors who buy from art dealers, then there's no one answer. There are as many as there are eccentric people with money to burn who collect art. Some will only collect gum bichromate prints, some only huge color prints, some only black and white nudes, some only work done in the 1890s. If you want ten different answers then ask ten collectors.

From what I see in New York, the only galleries that make a big deal about process are the ones that sell very traditional, conservative images, presumeably to more conservative collectors.

Completely agree with this statement.

[David Spivak-Focus Magazine]

All of Ted's comments apply equally to the annual AIPAD show in NYC, which is by far the largest show by gallery owners in the NY area. Of his three points, the only one I would add to slightly is the first: gallery owners seem to have a variety of nicer-sounding labels for digital prints, "glicee print" is a common description, as is "pigment print."

It's the largest show because it's the ONLY photography show in NY. There are several other artfairs, including the armory artfair, that blow AIPAD out of the water as far as number of galleries exhibiting and number of galleries exhibiting. AIPAD has held steady at around 7000 or so attendees. The Armory had over 30,000 people last year.

The majority of galleries that exhibit at the AIPAD Photography Show, exhibit vintage work or work that's 20th century, but still traditional. I think this year's show had Rose Gallery, out of all galleries, exhibit pigment inkjet prints... everyone else was geltatin silver or some other traditional process.

AIPAD is NOT the show to go to see what new trends exist in collecting photography... which is why Photo NY existed, to counter that and offer a more contemporary show. The problem lies that they forgot to market the damn thing and had less than 1000 people in the final year. There's no excuse to have a small crowd at a 3 year old artfair in New York city in the dead center of Chelsea.

It is unfortunate, because now there isn't anything in NY to offer people a glimpse at the latest trends in collecting photography. Someone should really do something about that...

[Peter Lewin]

The majority of galleries that exhibit at the AIPAD Photography Show, exhibit vintage work or work that's 20th century, but still traditional. I think this year's show had Rose Gallery, out of all galleries, exhibit pigment inkjet prints... everyone else was geltatin silver or some other traditional process.
FocusMag: In the thread on the AIPAD show we agreed that the exhibitor's emphasis is traditional, museum grade photography, as opposed to "cutting edge" photography (whatever that may be...) But my memory is that many galleries were offering digital prints. Of course those galleries which concentrate on Adams, Atget, and "early photography" would have silver or albumen prints (or similar). But, and I'm only going by memory, many of the galleries showing contemporary work (and especially color work) had digital prints for sale. Without getting my notes (after all, I'm not trying to start an argument, merely suggest that digital prints were available at more than just one gallery) I considered purchasing two panoramic B&W prints, and two color prints (four different galleries), all of which were digital output. My "gut" tells me that of the contemporary work, close to 50% was digital, agreeing with Ted Harris's earlier post about shows in other locations.

[David Spivak-Focus Magazine]

FocusMag: In the thread on the AIPAD show we agreed that the exhibitor's emphasis is traditional, museum grade photography, as opposed to "cutting edge" photography (whatever that may be...) But my memory is that many galleries were offering digital prints. Of course those galleries which concentrate on Adams, Atget, and "early photography" would have silver or albumen prints (or similar). But, and I'm only going by memory, many of the galleries showing contemporary work (and especially color work) had digital prints for sale. Without getting my notes (after all, I'm not trying to start an argument, merely suggest that digital prints were available at more than just one gallery) I considered purchasing two panoramic B&W prints, and two color prints (four different galleries), all of which were digital output. My "gut" tells me that of the contemporary work, close to 50% was digital, agreeing with Ted Harris's earlier post about shows in other locations.

Getting deep down into a gallery's inventory and what they have available is one thing. Most of the galleries were displaying a lot of traditional and vintage work. Very, very little color with the exception again being RoseGallery. Which photographer were you thinking about buying?

[Peter Lewin]

Getting deep down into a gallery's inventory and what they have available is one thing. Most of the galleries were displaying a lot of traditional and vintage work. Very, very little color with the exception again being RoseGallery. Which photographer were you thinking about buying?
First, to keep to the original question in this thread, which was whether the buying public differentiates between digital and silver prints: I suspect that most of the members of this forum don't qualify as the general public, since we are involved in producing photographs, and as such may have "allegiances" to specific techniques. In my case, the photographs which I buy are LF or panoramic B&W silver prints, because these are what I like to make myself, and having works by photographers better than myself provides inspiration, and benchmarks to measure my own work against. I haven't bought any digital work yet, not because I feel it is any less valuable, it simply isn't the technique I'm personally doing (at the present; since I already scan my 4x5s and do some digital proofing, who knows what I will say a year from now). Also, a lot of what hangs on my walls dates back 20 or more years to the Friends of Photography, who made it possible to buy works of "master photographers" (in my case, John Sexton, Sally Mann, Linda Connors) for absurdly low sums. Others, like Stu Levy and Nicholas Trofimuk I found (on vacation) at local galleries before photo prices reached today's levels, especially the levels at AIPAD!

At last year's AIPAD I was most tempted by:
(1) Joan Myers's Antarctic photos, particularly her panoramics, but also some of her DSLR penguin images. They were all digital prints, Andrew Smith Gallery (& many appeared recently in LensWork).
(2) A Western photographer who was new to me, Michael Berman, in particular a tryptych titled "MacDougal Crater" taken with LF, printed digitally; Stephen Clark Gallery.
(3) Pentti Samallahti, a Finnish photographer who shoots MF panoramics; I'm not sure whether the prints were silver or digital; Candice Perich Gallery.
(4) Jim Dow's interior architectural color work; these, checking my notes, were actually 8x10 contact prints, I believe Cibachromes; Janet Borden Gallery.

In the end I didn't buy any of them, simply because I didn't feel comfortable spending the $750-$2000 that the individual works were priced at. (And I guess that the fact I was tempted by some color and/or digital prints shows that I'm mellowing...)