This week, we began to look at the different commercial environments in which photography operates and were asked the following questions.
- During the course of this week, has your opinion changed about which commercial environment you are operating in, or want to be operating in?
Not really, Ive been working in advertising photography from being an assistant to setting up my own practice for over thirty years and although the business has changed considerably in that time the basic premise of being recognised and contracted to provide images for advertising purposes remains the same, albeit via different mediums and supplying different media. The market is still very much the one I aimed to break in to in essence.
The market I want to break into now is that of the fine art gallery world and my impressions from the outside prior to to having some success selling images at a few art fairs was its impossible to break through without being in the ‘right’ social networks. I felt there was a barrier to photographers perceived as being commercial being taken seriously as artists.
Then as I had my own small successes ad my knowledge has widened I can now see many commercial photographers are also taken very seriously as artists and thats very encouraging. Photographers like Nadav Kander, someone from my part of the advertising business although a generation or two ahead of me springs immediately to mind. I see Joel Meyerowitz with a huge fine art career who also came from a commercial background as did Andreas Gursky, learning his trade via his fathers commercial studio prior to studying at Dusseldorf.
- Which commercial environment do you want to explore further, and why?
As I said above I now wish to pursue building a career as a fine artist. The main reason is Ive spent decades constructing images for other people, building images to a prescribed requirement and whilst I have always and still do find this satisfying I also need to shoot to my own brief.
In addition the sales of my art so far have given me a huge sense of pride and satisfaction, knowing someone has chosen your image to display on their own wall is a feeling I find hard to convey, its a mix of pride yet massively humbling too. From a practical point of view Im not getting any younger, unexpected serious illness this year also led me to consider just how long I could realistically maintain the pace of the ad world.
Heres a screen grab from a buyer of one of my Miami Pastel images sold at auction just before Christmas last year. She was so happy she posted into Instagram and tagged me in. Seeing the work on the wall being enjoyed by its new owner like this gives me enormous pride, more than any billboard image because the person chose to display it, you dont have that choice with advertising images.
I love photography books, it seems I’m far from alone too and I would be ecstatic if I were to be able to make a photobook that people wanted on their shelf. This is an area I am very interested in, Im assuming fine art prints and book sales arent two separate things but I hope theyre not so connected one isnt possible without the other.