Opportunities for Fine Art....

[SAShruby]

Usually, I am staying out of philosophical discussions about art, photography, but I feel I need to say a few words.
For two years I am reading most of the threads about everything. I see lots of major contributors to these philosophical discussions and there are some groups of people joining in agreements with them and some are opposing them as well.

IMHO, I truly believe that fine art photographer or artist possess a combination of vision, personality, charisma, technique and the most important of all – experience and knowledge. The more experienced and knowledgeable is you, the more you will be able to express yourself better that others.

The world reality of being successful is measured by how many people know about you. Part of it is to promote yourself and sell your stuff. But it is not a measurement of fine art photographer. It is a tool to become known one.

I believe there are a lot of people in this world you can consider them as fine art photographers. But there are only few of them you know.

[PViapiano]

Great thread, everyone...

I am a professional musician here in Los Angeles, it's how I make a very good living. I am very fortunate to be in this position. My colleagues are incredibly talented players, at the top of their field. But oftentimes, some feel very empty that they're directing their talent at satisfying someone else's vision, playing on someone else's CD, concert, movie session, etc...you get the idea.

It's important that we all have a direct personal outlet for our own art, our own fulfillment. And if we're involved in the commercial arena of art, it's up to us as individuals to seek that out, to satisfy our inner selves, our hunger for self expression.

It costs a lot to be an artist. It costs us in loss of income, which equates in standards of living that may be below what you may want in your life. It's a hard life and there is no guarantee. That's why there are a lot of old, bitter artists with a jaundiced world view.

That's why I think that people like Kirk are in a great position. The commercial work supports the art making. Kirk is, above all, an artist. I mean, just look at his stuff! And, if you live anywhere near FreeStyle Photo in LA, you MUST go over there and look at his images, whereupon, you'll immediately want to put all your stuff on eBay and hang it up ;-)

So, whatever you do as a day job, just make sure you satisfy your "inner artist" regularly. You owe it to yourself and your sanity, and don't be lulled by "the grass is always greener" theory. The life of an artist is not for everybody...

[Christopher Perez]

Interesting. I beg to differ.

Jensen's analysis is just one place a person intersted in this topic could start. It's easy to use the salary and demographic information that's widely available to anyone using the 'net. While you might not agree with what Brook's says, it's easy to verify the veracity of his claims.

As a counterpoint... There is a photographer I know here in town. He does wonderful work. But he is not nationally known in the way Brooks is, nor does he have the kind of web-presence that Lenswork has. Yet, using the kind of analysis Brook's talks about, this photographer is able to realize thousands of dollars a month in revenue from his "art". He's not yet rich. He's not yet famous. But you never know, someday he might be.

Jensen's Myth

We have rehashed that Brooks Jensen approach to death. He can sell prints at volume pricing, because he does good work AND he has a magazine which regularly markets his work for virtually nothing. This is not a model for anyone else unless you can come up with credible, targeted, massive and free advertising (and no a website will not even begin to accomplish this). I call this Jensen's Myth.

[Kirk Gittings]

Thank you for those kind words PViapiano (great psuedonym for a professional musician).

Christopher, at the prices you are talking about, thousands of dollars a month, means like selling 50+ prints a month. Do you really believe that? Who is it? I would love to see his website.

[Hugo Zhang]

[/QUOTE]Peter,

The world reality of being succesfull is measured by how many people know about you. Part of it is to promote yourself and sell your stuff. But it is not a measurement of fine art photographer. It is a tool to become known one.[/QUOTE]


How true! Looking back at history, many great artists died little known or unknown, only to be discovered by later generations. To be an artist with any lasting power, you almost have to have an unique vision formed and sharpened by experiences and you also need to master the technique to express that unique vision. For us mortals, this requires decades if not life time of focus, dedication, hard work and sacrifice. That's why there are relative few survived in history of art.

If we define success in fine art photography with prints sales, I find that is very difficult. To be successful in sales of your fine art work, you almost have to consider certain factors unrelated to your artistic vision. There are gaps between your visions and what the market wants. Take contact prints for examples, I only discovered the beauty of them when myself started to use a 8x10 camera. It's an acquired taste. We all know how exquisitely beautiful those well made pt/pd prints are, but how many those fine art photographers of those prints are considered successful?

Of course, there are those artists who enjoyed their fame and success while they were alive. Ansel Adams, Shakesapeare and Piccasso, just to name a few. But they are exceptions rather than norm, history will forget most of those artists who are successful today.

Hugo

[paulr]

It's been said many times, but you have to consider which art market you're going to sell to. There are lots of differentt niche markets that all call themselves "art," and they often don't have much to do with each other. Even if the practitioners appear similar, the buyers probably don't even know one another. All these markets have different practices and different ideas about prices.

And you may not have much say in the matter of what market buys into your work. Joel Peter Witkin, I'll hazzard a guess, sells very little to hotel chains. Eliott Porter probably doesn't sell much through galleries that cater to contemporary painting and conceptual photograph collectors.

The best you can do is figure out what market likes what you do, and get your work in front of it. It then helps to understand that market's customs. A Chelsea gallery and its customers will not be happy if you print editions of 100, and price your work under $500. It's not what they're up to.

Likewise, the hotel chain shopping for decorative work will not be pleased if you print editions of five, price them at $10,000 each, and sell them unframed, to be pinned directly to a gallery wall. No matter how much they like the image.

[chris jordan]

Hi guys, interesting discussion. I cannot profess to have any real answers to the questions posed here, but maybe at least a few observations. First, there definitely are amazing opportunities available to fine-art photographers, including those who have limited or no exhibition history.

It used to be that you had to work your way up from the bottom-- coffee shop shows to local gallery shows to regional gallery shows to local museums to regional museums, etc. That is still true to some extent, but there are also these new portfolio review events that allow you to jump past a few squares on the board. If people don't know about them, or haven't attended them, I highly recommend learning about them. They are basically like photo-art speed dating-- in the space of a weekend you get to meet and show your work to 10 or 20 curators, gallerists, art directors, etc. People like Yossi Milo find their new artists there; in some instances, Yossi (and other gallerists too) will give a NY solo show to someone who has never exhibited in their life. I know several photographic artists who have gotten their start that way.

Photographs are also being collected privately and by museums for higher prices and in larger quantities than ever before. The people who collect photographs are not people of average income; it is people who have the income to buy expensive cars, watches, etc., and if they happen to have taste alone with their wealth, then one of the expensive things they buy is art.

Another wonderful thing about the photographic art world is that there is always room for one more artist. In some sense it is competitive, because you have to offer something special, but if you do have something special to offer, then there is no direct competition with other artists. What I mean is, if you want to be a commercial photographer, you are competing directly with other commercial photographers in your area. There are only a limited number of jobs, and depending on the type of work you do, the competition can be cutthroat and exhausting.

In the art world, as long as you have something special to offer, your work will be collected. There is no direct competition with other photographers, and there are new galleries opening up all the time. So your place in the art world is determined not by how much you compete or how hard you work, but just by how good your work is.

And the price of your work will be determined by the market. If you do the art fair thing, you have to sell lots of prints because the price people will pay is low. But in the fine-art world, you can potentially command far higher prices. Most photographic artists do limited editions, which raises the price and allows the photographer to sell the imgaes out and move on to new work (which is nice, and also scary because then you have to move on to new work...).

And another observation I have is that you get to define success for yourself. For some it is how much money you make; for others it is the feeling of wellbeing you get from reaching an audience with a message you care about. For others it might be the recognition, or the feeling of making a difference in the world. For others still, it might be the financial freedom to keep photographing full time.

I am pessimistic about many things in the world right now-- our leadership, the state of our culture, the state of our environment. But one thing I am excited and optimistic about is the fine-art photographic world. Photography is turning out to be the medium of our time. Things can be said with photographs that cannot be said in any other way, and with some intention and effort, a skilled photographer can use the communicative power of photography as an amazing tool, and make a decent living at the same time.

Okay, one final comment, and this goes back to the "Aspens" thread. Independently of whether the world needs more photos of aspens, one thing that I think it is fair to say is that few art collectors these days want more photos of aspens, and few museums or galleries are interesting in showing them. To make it in the fine-art photographic world, it is necessary to engage the contemporary world in one way or another. There are a million different ways to do that, but if there is any single essential ingredient in being successful as a fine-art photographer, I'd say that is it.

~cj

[Mark Sawyer]

Personally....To me a successful artist is one who makes an adequate living primarily from their personal art and who enjoy some respect from their peers. .

I wouldn't argue with these pretty basic standards, but offer that Ansel Adams and Edward Weston would qualify as having only periodic, mostly struggling periods of success.

[chris jordan]

Hugo, this is a myth that has been around for ages. The truth is (and there are whole books written on this subject) that the vast majority of all artists in all mediums (music, painting, photography, etc.) are recognized in their lifetimes. The number of artists who have died unnoticed and whose work was discovered later is very few and far between. For some reason we like to imagine that it is otherwise; maybe it is a form of defensiveness, I don't know.

[paulr]

For some reason we like to imagine that it is otherwise; maybe it is a form of defensiveness, I don't know.

Sure, I like to imagine I'll be a bigshot long after I'm dead. It beats never.