Photographic and Art galleries

This could be in the wrong thread, so moderators please move if so.

How many art/photographic galleries now only exhibit digital images through computer screens, which allows them to alter the entire exhibition at the blink of an eye.

cliveh said:

This could be in the wrong thread, so moderators please move if so.

How many art/photographic galleries now only exhibit digital images through computer screens, which allows them to alter the entire exhibition at the blink of an eye.

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I would think that few commercial galleries would do something like that regularly, since the goal of the gallery is to sell prints and buyers like to see just what that are buying. Maybe low-end stuff. There is one gallery I know of that only shows digital images and makes their sales online, changing the images shown daily. But they also have a satisfaction guarantee if the print that arrives is not as expected.

As far as art is concerned, there is a tactile aspect that just cannot be experienced online. I would be suspect of a gallery only selling that way.

I can’t say, but I just opened my exhibition of silver-gelatin handcrafted fibre prints in an art gallery. And as far as I know they don’t do digital shows.

There have been large public venues of "Virtual Art", mainly works of famous painters, etc, charging admission. They'll never get a penny from me.

There are also many online art "auctions', and EBay itself, trying to sell known prints as commodities. It impossible to assess actual print condition under those auspices, so buyer beware. But most of it is just people showing all kinds of shots, and then adding a provision for having an inkjet print issued, along with a price list.

Another kind of venue would be the showroom model of Peter Lik, for example, whose main gallery in Lahaina (prior to the fire) held big backlit transparencies, which people arriving on the nearby cruise ship dock could order examples of in their own specified size and print medium, whether transparent or conventional inkjet. But that was such PS-tortured tourist trap fare anyway that I doubt the potential crowd had any idea what a well made print would look like. He adapted to photography (if it can even be called that) the factory model of pseudo-paintings of Thomas Kincaid. You order from a showroom, then the finished product gets shipped to you from a centralized plant.

I at least took slides of actual prints, and then scanned them for my website, which was an exceptionally good one for those lower download speed days. Wasn't worth the extra effort. Some of the best prints don't convey well over the web at all, and I quickly learned that web surfers and print buyers are completely different categories of people. In the words of Hannibal Lecter, one covets what they see. All my sales came from people seeing my actual prints in person.

There is an issue with galleries having only digital copies of represented photographers' work for customers to see, even when 'real' work is on the walls. This can be partially driven by expense -- the need to reduce on-site inventory for insurance purposes, lack of proper storage space, time and personnel requirements for showing work, and so on.

A few times (that I have heard of) people interested in my work have been a little disappointed finding out that nice big photograph on the flat screen is contact printed and is only available 4"x10". I still sell a few, so some folks must get over their disappointment.

Vaughn said:

There is an issue with galleries having only digital copies of represented photographers' work for customers to see, even when 'real' work is on the walls. This can be partially driven by expense -- the need to reduce on-site inventory for insurance purposes, lack of proper storage space, time and personnel requirements for showing work, and so on.

A few times (that I have heard of) people interested in my work have been a little disappointed finding out that nice big photograph on the flat screen is contact printed and is only available 4"x10". I still sell a few, so some folks must get over their disappointment.Physical photos take up relatvielely

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Physical photos take up relatively little space. They can be stored in a flat files holding hundreds of prints. There is a bigger problem with galleries not returning images that have been entrusted to them, or even selling images without notifying or paying the artist. Doug Christmas comes to mind (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/13/...rismas-ace-gallery-embezzlement-sentence.html), although he was dealing in paintings rather than photos. But I have heard the similar stories about some photo galleries.

And I am sure there are dishonest people of all sides...and that we hear about the few bad eggs, and take the far greater majority of good ones for granted...but not quite the problem under consideration here...that's apple problems vs orange problems.

I would say a big problem is the insurance to cover an inventory that could be worth a quarter million or more...and/or the costs to meet the requirements the insurance company might require to get coverage (upgraded security and fire precautions)

Seeing the actual work is always best...I don't really like selling from online images....too worried the buyer will have different expectations.

I was always careful about commercial galleries. In the back room of one of them, pretty much the life's work of Manuel Alvarez Bravo was laying around on the floor, or in this or that corner, awaiting framing, with a leaky roof above. No way I was going to let them handle my prints.

In another case, a really uppity venue, my prints got hung between big Motherwell paintings on one side, and little Winston Churchill Impressionist paintings on the other side. The projector halogen lighting was so intense that the acrylic paint on Motherwell's canvases was beginning to melt. I pulled my Cibachromes after two weeks. They had already begun fading - more than twenty years of direct daylight would have done!

But surely such a digital gallery allows the director of the gallery to exhibit any photographer from anywhere on the planet, with no physical prints involved. Changed or edited at the blink of an eye. If sold digital prints could be produced within a few days at the gallery location. The only downside I can see, is that the prints sold would have about 30% less brightness range than those in the exhibition.

Imagine a steak house doing that, Cliveh. "Here's what the plate looks like". You can't tell anything about the real taste and flavor.

DREW WILEY said:

Imagine a steak house doing that, Cliveh. "Here's what the plate looks like". You can't tell anything about the real taste and flavor.

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When I worked as a colour printer we were a two person operation, who only printed for studio and commercial photographers. The owner also had some commercial photography clients. One of them was a growing chain of steakhouse restaurants - now known as "The Keg" - which placed orders regularly for new sets of the prints from my boss's 4x5 negatives depicting each standard menu item, plated the way that the franchise owner wanted them to be plated.
That helped support the chainwide consistency of the product.
So yes, there is a role for photos that say "Here's what the plate looks like"
They were really delicious looking prints!

DREW WILEY said:

Imagine a steak house doing that, Cliveh. "Here's what the plate looks like". You can't tell anything about the real taste and flavor.

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Have you ever been in a McDonalds?

cliveh said:

Have you ever been in a McDonalds?

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And does the food served look like the photos on the wall?

Pieter12 said:

And does the food served look like the photos on the wall?

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Well in th case of prints that are viewed by reflected light, instead of transmitted, they look worse.

Well, in one town, there were big PS-tortured Galen Rowell prints on the wall at McDonald's. That was bad taste enough. A friend was with me, having just come out of the high country, "Something sure looks fishy about those pictures". I think we just stopped for a hit of so-so coffee, before proceeding down the highway early that morning.

Ain't gourmet dining, that's for sure. Not "gourmet" pictures either. Depends on one's taste, or lack thereof. Many people have never seen a fine print, so don't know the difference.

The now-retired fellow who wanted me to take over his photo lab (as if I'm not tired enough myself by now) wound down his business by specializing in food photography. He was a master of it, with top end clients, and a full gourmet kitchen right there in the studio, amidst a few million dollars worth of the finest equipment. He started that aspect of his working taking 8x10 chromes of intricate table setups, and printing them in immaculate detail on 50 inch wide Cibachrome, also in-house. It included a lot of sushi etc on fine China for Japan Airline displays - not exactly McDonald's.

So yeah, Pieter - you're right - those McDonald's food pictures do look like their food - disgusting either way. The whole point in stopping there was to get enough caffeine for another hour and a half up the road to a real Deli. After eating freeze dried trail food for a week or so, one gets desperate. Too bad the evening fishing hour competes with the photographic hour; you can't really do both well at the same time.

The worst pictures I've even seen were backlit Peter Lik ones. That just made them look even more gaudy and fake. Aunt Maude's endless old fashioned slide shows of her vacation to the pretzel factory in Peroria looked better.

What was really nuts was when Bill Gates became the first to install big LED screens in his house, with push button famous paintings popping up backlit, when he was rich enough to afford a real Gauguin or Rembrandt! Now everyone can afford those kinds of display panels.

From what I understand, the really successful galleries duct tape bananas to the wall.....

You can't deny that images viewed by transmitted light provides a better image, hence the uptake of smartphones.

It not how smart the phone is which counts, but how dumb the design is that makes you hold it at arms length to take an picture. Even a nine dollar disposable cardboard camera has a makeshift viewfinder.

cliveh said:

You can't deny that images viewed by transmitted light provides a better image, hence the uptake of smartphones.

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I am quite capable of it. I suppose it is up to an individual's definition of an image and its desired qualities.

It not how smart the phone is which counts, but how dumb the design is that makes you hold it at arms length to take an picture.

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Drew...a friend's name for that is the Calling the Mothership pose.

There is probably a market for high-end poster shops, I mean galleries.

High end poster shops? That's what Fisherman's Wharf in SF and Sausalito is all about. Last I checked, they were buying photolithographs of famous modernist paintings printed in the thousands for around $15 apiece (I've seen the wholesale price lists),
then slick selling them framed to "investors" for several thousand apiece. The fact is, the picture frames themselves were worth more than the art inside it. In CA, it's illegal to sell a photolithograph (fancy poster) as a true lithograph.

Down in Carmel - noted for its superb selection of photography, the painting galleries were another story altogether. It got so fraudulent that a full-time FBI agent was put in residence there for awhile. A "famous French seascape painter" turned out to be an assembly line in Mexico. Then you had Kincaid's gift-shoppy gallery near the Monterey Aquarium, and his high jinks putting a dot or two of real paint by his own hand on otherwise mass-produced pictures to skirt the law.

Not all slide images are bad. I can't understand why people who make prints can't understand that.

cliveh said:

Not all slide images are bad. I can't understand why people who make prints can't understand that.

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Slide images are not bad at all. It's just that viewing is limited to either a light box and a loupe (for less than LF) or projection. And then one introduces projection surface and ambient light. A transparency is much more delicate in most cases, too. A print is much easier to appreciate.

Pieter12 said:

Slide images are not bad at all. It's just that viewing is limited to either a light box and a loupe (for less than LF) or projection. And then one introduces projection surface and ambient light. A transparency is much more delicate in most cases, too. A print is much easier to appreciate.

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Have you noticed how many shops, estate agents show images that are back illuminated. As all images in smart phones. That's what the general public want. You are viewing my response now on back illumination as you read.

cliveh said:

Have you noticed how many shops, estate agents show images that are back illuminated. As all images in smart phones. That's what the general public want. You are viewing my response now on back illumination as you read.

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All commercial purposes. How many residences have backlit imagery beyond the TV/monitor? Digital picture frames were introduced years and years ago. The only people I know who have any (usually just one) are in assisted-living facilities or on office desks.