Price for a photograph limited to "1/1" ?

[RobC]

if editions of one is not about marketing why is it being discussed in this thread which should be about "Presentation and Marketing". Its another OP thread hijacked by someone with an agenda...

Merry Christmas

 

[Ian Leake]

I seem to remember that early photographers, desperate to be perceived as artists, tried to be more painterly than the painters. This failed of course - painters continued to look down their noses at photographers. It didn't work because painting is painting and photography is photography: even a child can see that they are two fundamentally different media. It seems to me that Kevin has fallen into the same trap: denying the fundamentals of his chosen medium (photography) in the vain hope that it will be seen in the same way that people see another medium (painting).

All photographs have the potential to be art and all photographers have the potential to be artists. Whether a photograph is presented as a unique print, a limited edition of prints, or an open edition of prints is fundamentally a marketing strategy. The print is still a photograph - it's not a painting and never will be - it's a photograph.

If I remember correctly, someone calculated that Kevin would have to produce 260 unique works per year to achieve his revenue targets (based on Kevin's claimed sales targets). This is one photograph per day, Monday to Friday, all year every year - the phrase "mass produced" springs to mind as does the brand Walmart. Tourist town galleries and country craft shops are stuffed full of mass produced paintings by "local artists", mostly watercolours of local scenes, but also kittens in baskets, babies in baskets, kittens on babies, babies on kittens, etcetera, etcetera. Presumably these paintings earn the people who make them a living, but I'll bet those painters never ever sell a $5000 painting.

Of course fewer sales are necessary if Kevin can achieve his aspiration of $5,000 per work: but a customer who buys a print at $5,000 is a very different beast from one who buys at $200. My framer regularly prepares photographs for galleries and collectors priced in the $10,000 to $20,000 range (except he's in London so he uses £). The ones I've seen all have something in common - they are all very high quality prints showing profound images that reflect the photographer's unique vision. Of course they have one other thing in common too - someone is willing to pay large sums of money in order to own them.

It seems to me that if your aspiration is to sell prints at these prices, then it would be better to concentrate on your purpose as a photographer, your vision, your craft, and finding those high value customers. If you get these things right then it won't matter how many prints you make from a negative.

 

[eddym]

It seems to me that if your aspiration is to sell prints at these prices, then it would be better to concentrate on your purpose as a photographer, your vision, your craft, and finding those high value customers. If you get these things right then it won't matter how many prints you make from a negative.

Best point made in this whole discussion.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

I bring up the bronze example, because we tend to assume that the problem that Walter Benjamin described as "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in his essay of that title is new to photography, cinema, and audio recording, but while acknowledging that industrial reproduction is a new factor, we've had mechanical reproduction in various forms for a long time, and many of these questions have been around before Eastman and Edison. In casting the model is even called a "positive" and the mold a "negative," and isn't one of our favorite film developers named after Rodin?

As far as photography competing in the marketplace with painting, it would seem that photographers printing big and in color like Andreas Gursky are having the most success, and they're not producing one offs.

 

[SuzanneR]

Ian... well said.

It seems to me painting and photography have very little in common, and I think we perpetuate a kind "inferiority complex" about photography as an art when we try to relate it to painting. That was the problem back at the start of photography, and the medium really came into its own when the nature of it as a medium was better understood.

I don't make editions... then again, I don't sell prints, and I'm not likely to make editions. (I'd hate to have to make the same print 25 times... ugh!) But I think making more than one print is a strength of the medium. Or choosing to make one can be a strength. Though how many prints one chooses to make is marketing, and not the meat of the the art making.

 

[Les McLean]

Ian yours is the best post I've read in the midst of many excellent and well thought out views on this highly emotive subject. The only photographer that I know who seriously limits the number of prints from a single negative is Thomas Joshua Cooper who makes 3 enlarged prints and 3 contact prints from his 7" x 5" original negative. The enlarged prints sell for £11,000, I don't know about the contact prints I think he gives them to friends. In my opinion Thomas fits the quote from your post copied above.

 

[papagene]

In sculpture (bronze casting) a clay model is made first, then cast in plaster. With that plaster mold a wax model is made and fine-tuning to the piece is done. The wax model is then prepared to be put in a special cast mold. The wax is then burned out of that mold, hence the name "Lost Wax Process." Finally the molten bronze is poured in. When sufficiently cooled down the cast is taken apart and the final piece of sculpture is revealed.
Now, you could call the first clay model the original work of art. Or you could equate it to a negative in the photo process. You could also call the wax model the original work of art because refinements are made to it.
You could also equate the final cast mold as the negative since it really is a negative form and that you can make several pieces from it.
But having known a few sculptors in my time, I can safely say that the bronze piece(s) is what they call their artwork. And it doesn't matter how many bronzes are made from that original clay model, they all are works of art!

gene (MFA in Sculpture)

 

[Ian Leake]

I bring up the bronze example, because we tend to assume that the problem that Walter Benjamin described as "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in his essay of that title is new to photography, cinema, and audio recording, but while acknowledging that industrial reproduction is a new factor, we've had mechanical reproduction in various forms for a long time, and many of these questions have been around before Eastman and Edison. In casting the model is even called a "positive" and the mold a "negative," and isn't one of our favorite film developers named after Rodin?

Bronzes are an excellent example.

Rodin worked predominantly in plaster, I believe. The actual bronzes were scaled up and made by (and sometimes even signed by) specialist bronze workers (likewise with his marble sculptures). Many of his bronzes were made at different scales at different times for different buyers; and many sculptures were made in both bronze and marble versions. Bronzes continued to be cast after his death.

Incidentally, Rodin also re-used elements from one sculpture to another: so you may find the same legs on two different torsos in different sculptures.

I don't think we'd find many people who'd say a Rodin bronze isn't art or that Rodin wasn't an artist because he employed other people to make multiples of his work.

 

[RobC]

Suppose you take the work of Andy Goldsworthy. Many of his sculptures are built, photographed and then destroyed. But the photographs are then exhibited. Discuss....

 

[removed account4]

SNIP

Rodin also re-used elements from one sculpture to another: so you may find the same legs on two different torsos in different sculptures.

jeez, he legs swapped ?
that is like one of the photographers near me
who "head swaps"


john

 

[Ian Leake]

Perhaps there's time for one final thought before Christmas...

This whole thing smacks of status anxiety to me. I suggest reading Alain de Botton's book of the same name.

 

[clay]

Another related idea is the Harold Bloom's 'Anxiety of Influence' first put forward as a concept in critical evaluation of literature (poetry in particular). The cliff notes version is that a work of art can be analyzed by the uneasy relationship and anxiety it has with its precursors. And photography has always had this uneasy relationship with painting because they are both two-dimensional art forms that end up in frames

Painting is photography's daddy, and the history of art photography has been a long, almost Freudian, battle to define itself outside of the long shadow cast by painting.

The cool thing about this theory is that it recognizes that even when an artist consciously rebels against a precursor, he is still defining itself in agonistic terms with the prior art. And I think that is what we are seeing here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anxiety_of_influence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agon

Clearly, becoming a turnip is the only way out of this dilemma, since the only precursor to a turnip is a round dirty root vegetable.

Perhaps there's time for one final thought before Christmas...

This whole thing smacks of status anxiety to me. I suggest reading Alain de Botton's book of the same name.

 

[Guillaume Zuili]

Market makes the price, photographer makes wishes...
The edition isn't really an issue. No print is really the same, too many variables and so many interpretations. An edition of whatever number isn't an exact reproduction of the same print. What is IN the picture is more important than the number.
As the question of being an artist. Anybody can say "I'm an artist", again, this is the Market that decides...
World isn't perfect...

 

[JBrunner]

Market makes the price, photographer makes wishes...
The edition isn't really an issue. No print is really the same, too many variables and so many interpretations. An edition of whatever number isn't an exact reproduction of the same print. What is IN the picture is more important than the number.
As the question of being an artist. Anybody can say "I'm an artist", again, this is the Market that decides...
World isn't perfect...

So you are saying that a market appreciation for ones work makes an artist? If so, I must disagree.

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

"Suppose you take the work of Andy Goldsworthy. Many of his sculptures are built, photographed and then destroyed. But the photographs are then exhibited. Discuss...."

this is similar to a sculpture project I'm working on...I started out with a simple zinc sculpture...then I melted it down and made a new sculpture...which also has been melted

each time I display the sculpture in a show it is accompanied by depictions of it's previous incarnations

Also, each time I melt the sculpture down I add tin and copper...so the lowly zinc sculpture will eventually become a brass sculpture...then end up as a bronze piece

 

[Vaughn]

"...snip
Also, each time I melt the sculpture down I add tin and copper...so the lowly zinc sculpture will eventually become a brass sculpture...then end up as a bronze piece

That is so cool! The time-transformation elements would be fun to work with!

Vaughn

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

Oh...I left out part of the concept...each time I show the piece the CURRENT version of the sculpture is in a black box...so you only see what the piece WAS, but not what it currently IS

 

[Vaughn]

Oh...I left out part of the concept...each time I show the piece the CURRENT version of the sculpture is in a black box...so you only see what the piece WAS, but not what it currently IS

But is it dead or alive? Ohhh...the uncertainity of it all!

Vaughn

 

[Gary Holliday]

I've come back to reading this thread as I'm intrigued by the one edition idea. In my darkroom session, I'll maybe only achieve 2-3 prints which are better than the other 'practice runs' I will only want those 3 prints to be seen.

If I want some sort of nationwide appeal and commercial success, I would need to produce 200 or so for everyone to see my work in each UK city. One of my favourite artists; Paul Horton produced digital reproductions of his pastel pieces. If he didn't produce the digital versions, I doubt I would have seen his work at all.

 

[SusanK]

What the heck happened in here....??? I'm gone for a couple of weeks only to return and find that a hockey game has broken out. I certainly didn't intend my original post to erupt in such a firestorm. The bottom line is: how someone (I'm almost afraid to say the word 'artist') produces, markets, and editions their work is their own decision and should not be judged in a negative and defeating manner by anyone else. I certainly wouldn't do that to any of you.

I call "time out." May I encourage everyone to take a break from my thread? Please, go enjoy Christmas Day dinner with their families, friends, and loved ones.

Happy Holidays.
Be safe.

Susan

 

[Guillaume Zuili]

Merry Christmas Susan ! And everybody else...

 

[Jim Moore]

No its not, its great, thanks...

You just made my Christmas....

Kevin Kevin Kevin...

I know I've been away for awhile but I never expected this when I dropped in to say hello.

What's happened to you? Have you been hanging out with Jorge so much that his condescending attitude and hostility has rubbed of on you?

This is not the Kevin I know.

 

[gr82bart]

The concept of making only a single photographic 'print' isn't new. I think Canada's copyright laws with respect to photography are based on this notion. My guess is when plates were made, a long time ago, they were given to the person who 'commissioned' them hence Canadian law is based on that concept - whoever paid for the image owned the copyright and the plates, the photographer was a 'mere technician' for the art direction of the buyer. Of course the photographer's role grew to include being the artistic director and artist too.

I'm not trying to side with anyone here, I'm just pointing out that a single 'edition' concept in photography isn't new.

Pricing is something I have no clue about. I just take the word of well known APUGer who advised me, price at the high range. This is something that career advisors also recommend when negotiating total compensation. Conceptually and practically, I agree with it.

Alright people, enough tête à tête, let's open presents!

Regards, Art.

 

[papagene]

JIM!!!!! Are you back???? We've missed you ol' buddy! And Merry Christmas to you and the rest of APUG-land.

And Thank You SusanK.

Now I'm off to visit family for the Christmas Holiday... Peace to all.

gene