The Business of Fine Art Photography | Thomas Werner

[Music] thank you all for showing up today thank you to Deborah and Stephanie in the event space B&H for having me here it's nice to be here my name is Thomas give you a little bit of a background my background I was a working commercial photographer we've been in exhibiting photographer I used to have representation in New York in LA I had some work that was reviewed in The New Yorker once that was kind of Nirvana for me in the fine art world and it was quite nice I teach at Parsons School of Design I I'm an author of the book that we just mentioned the fashion image is by Bloomsbury publishing in London if you're interested in commercial photography there's a chapter on conceptualizing your work there's the creative team the clients team the editors team fashion designers team there's a lot of great information in there it's 80,000 words about 200 images just came out last week so and the first time actually I've seen them so this is pretty exciting for me I'm also the editor and editor large for i RK magazine it's a small French fashion and culture magazine we're print twice a year and we're online and what else can tell you sone a gallery in Chelsea Thomas Warner gallery on West 26th Street for 10 years I do a lot of work I've done work with United Nations Alliance of civilizations I'm a teacher at their education first summer school and with some students from Parsons we put together a media literacy site a few years ago for UNESCO in the United Nations in French Russian Spanish English and French so a bunch of different stuff I I've been working in the fine arts for quite some time and I am happy to answer all of your questions that I can and hopefully I'll give you some good information today what we're gonna talk about is fine art as a marketplace and I think that's really important because the fine art market is made up of a series of marketplaces it isn't a hierarchy like most people think there are the museums and galleries and other places but they're also art fairs and other ways for you to sell your work the point is for you to put your work in the place that you will be most successful right and everybody has different goals right how many people want somebody to like their work yeah all right turnout how many people want to make a little money you guys consistent how many how many people want a museum quality level career okay all right well that's fair you should say yes if that's what you want that's what you should say yes right but each of those things has something a little different to it right and there are different things you're gonna need to do with your work to achieve each of those goals I think that's important um you know some people want to add revenues to their work some people want their friends to like their work some people you know just want to want to create and all of those are valid things I think it's important to remember though that and we're just gonna have a few pictures then you're gonna have to listen which is which and take notes Ansel Adams we all love uncle Ansel he's amazing right but for the majority of Ansel Adams career he couldn't sell his work nobody wanted to buy it right the find our market place didn't exist until the late eighties early 90s so you could buy if you went to Yosemite fine Ansel Adams print in the souvenir shop for $100 a print handmade if you'd had the good taste and a good fortune and bought a few you probably wouldn't be standing here you know who I write you you would have made a great investment you'd have extraordinary work but I think it's important Ansel sold his body of work for a million dollars I believe it was in late 90s and was roundly chastised by the other photographers for selling out because his fine art work you shouldn't monetize your fine art work like that it's yours it's personal right it's a way of thinking of fine art not in a way that's very different so things have changed right we had some of the first exhibitions and museums of photography not that long ago certainly there was one of the 40s the family of man or late 50s but as we move forward there weren't actually a lot of photo exhibitions that you saw on museums Avedon was one of the first people to show fashion here at the Met and then at MoMA so a lot of the work that you make that's considered fine art now certainly wasn't until the recent past and the marketplace wasn't developed for you to sell your work in because people didn't think photography was art they just didn't despite how hard it was to make so what is the contemporary marketplace like and on one hand they like new ideas or new things right and everybody says you know everything's been done what am I gonna do this new everything's been done so I want you to think about something early on August sander German photographer 4 by 5 8 by 10 he photographed people who lived on the fringe these were people who considered were considered at that point the edge of society right and he brought out his camera and he photographed people very still and he photographed working-class people right and you can see the effect of the four by five and you can see the effect of the way he photographed there's a lot of respect there but it's very formal and these weren't the kind of people who are normally paying for pictures or could afford to do pictures at that time this was kind of a everyday people right so not the usual subject matter well then thirty five-millimeter came around right and everybody said well thirty five-millimeter that's not as good as four by five that's not as good as medium format you can't shoot in 35 well Larry Clark took that and he began to photograph his friends until Sarah zona so he created a book called Tulsa and he created a book called teenage lust and he used the ability to work in thirty-five and got close and personal right so he photographed people who might have been considered on the edge of society or the fringe of society not that people usually photographed and he brought something new to it right technology is one of the things that allowed him to do that right but his personal relationships in his way of seeing his friends was another thing he brought same subject matter different way of seeing right I think it's important that you think about that and realize that a lot of its reinterpreting what's been done or bringing your own perspective to it then Nan Goldin worked on the Lower East Side and she photographed people who were at that point considered on the fringe of society people who or does mainstreamed as others she used what's called the snapshot aesthetic because people thought that look like a snapshot but I really want you whenever you look at Nan's photos they're extraordinarily well they're very formal they're certainly we'll put together right they're very formal in their composition these aren't snapshots in a way that you might take pictures on a trip but they had an aesthetic that was different and a feel that was different so she looked at the same idea but brought something new to it right so it's the same thing but bringing something new to the concept and I think that's really important because everything maybe has been done but probably not technology allows you new things camera phones and other things that you all have allow you different kind of access and people had before and you can bring a new perspective to other things right now much to your chagrin the pictures are done and you have to listen to me talk but there's a lot of information so and we can shut this off of it's distracting because I know people look so concept is one thing the idea right the idea that you use is one thing that the contemporary world values people value the idea the concept and the context the place in which your idea exists so let's say I work at B&H and I live 8 blocks or 20 blocks away let's make it 20 blocks and every day I walk to work and every day I walk to work at photograph every piece of garbage I see which is daunting but I photograph every piece of garbage I see along the way at some point New York magazine says oh my gosh that's amazing we want to do a story on the rising issue of trash in the city and their want to use a couple of my pictures and maybe they'll give me a hundred and twenty five dollars each to use those pictures and that's great so I'm in New York magazine I get 125 or 250 bucks my pictures are run and that's how they function that context well maybe as I'm walking through I begin to look at I'm walking through different neighborhoods of different wealth so different socio-economic levels of people right so now I'm not only photographing garbage but I'm also looking at ideas of consumption and disposability across the socio-economic level it's context of Manhattan now it's getting a little more interesting maybe I walk through two or three different ethnic neighborhoods so now that garbage is a study of consumption and disposability across different socio-economic context and multiple ethnic groups in Manhattan that right that can that concept has value so now we have that garbage and maybe that garbage is interesting because it's about something else so I take those prints and I go to a gallery now like oh my gosh that's a great concept I love the idea you know it's in we love the idea that you're gonna blow this garbage up and okay great well put them on our wall with some for $1,200 each all right why because there's a context and it's different concept in a different context same picture in a different place has a different value and you're gonna find that throughout our talk today right concept in context where it's located and what the idea is I had a student who she wanted to photograph her garbage every month and she photographed it know every week she hung a camera from the ceiling and a medium format and we taped off a square and every week she would lay out all our garbage and photograph it and she was probably she was like groundbreaking at that point and she was published in a number of places and her work what is exhibited right because it was the idea of a young woman her age in Manhattan and and what what kind of things do young people consume and dispose of it was quite interesting right so different concepts let's say on one level one place you can sell your work our art fairs right and buy art fairs I don't mean the armory when I said I realized I have to clarify that in New York is when I say artwork art so you're working an Art Fair everyone thinks you're gonna be at the Armory you know or you set up a booth and you go through and you flip through the bins right and that's your work you can sell your work at art fairs now is there anything wrong with that not at all my friend Todd oh gosh he was working it was quite a few years ago he said you know I'm gonna quit my job I'm gonna spend my time in Southeast Asia I'm gonna photograph indigenous tribes and I'm gonna sell the prints to people in the Midwest all right sounds like good luck you can sleep on my sofa cuz that's the tough one and he did he quit his job he got this old van he bought a booth and he started out and he started and we made all these prints we've been all these choices we were sure we're gonna sell and they didn't right away he kept going back and he got to the point over the course of a few years where he was doing a series of art fairs that made sense to him making between 100 and hundred thirty thousand dollars a year he would sell his work every summer he would travel every winter he lived in Wisconsin that's where I grew up he bought a church he renovated the back half and they lived in the front the back half was his studio his work area and the end he had an Airstream and a motorcycle when a truck so he would drive the truck in they would set up he could frame and mount in the back they live in the Airstream and I'd be up here in New York in the winter and he'd call me and he'd say how you do it like I'm good and so how are you so I'm on the beach in Texas riding my motorcycle eating you know eating crab like I don't like you and he said I know and you know and it was all good um and the beauty for Todd was that he could take his work and he could make unlimited numbers of those prints right on Edition so he could sell an 11 by 14 for 125 dollars or he could sell a 40 by 60 for $2,400 or $2,800 and he could sell as many of them as he wanted right and art fairs are kind of amazing to me because people walk in and they're like it's an art fair and people sell like blocks of wood and people like that's art it's an art fair it's art right people people spend money at art fairs they spend real money and he found his audience and he had a website and a following and he built this up and he made a good living right so that's one way of doing it so how do our fairs work you get your booth you get your prints and you submit so there's a book that'll tell you the best art fairs and how much the average is people make it different art fairs and you can look that up you submit your work it's like 25 35 dollars then there's a room with people like this and everybody's work goes up on the screen and they'll say yes no yes and if you're accepted you can buy a space depending on how big your booth is or you want to smell much you want to spend you can buy a space you go in and you set up and you wait you answer a lot of questions about what kind of camera you use and where you traveled and that kind of stuff and people stop in and you sell your work I think it's really important though that you understand that when you work at art fairs or when you work at small galleries which we'll talk about in a minute you don't have to addition your work in auditioning means limiting the number of prints and larger conceptual galleries or larger galleries are going to want you to limit the number of prints you make of each thing because that creates a certain kind of value right so well weird about making I was on a panel with Jeanne Greenberg Van Doren she owns was Artemis Greenberg Van Doren gallery and I think they just changed the name it's up on up on the Upper East Side and Jeanne said great artists explore a very narrow vision broadly and I think that's really genius right think about any great photographer that you know and their whole lives really the majority of their lives they explored a certain idea with great breadth and I don't think they felt locked in we're always worried like I'm gonna get locked into one thing but great art careers build on themselves right so if you look at Avedon's worker if you look at Andrews gorski's work he looks at ideas of how the structure of places and how we organize things you know but he in each iteration of his work he looks at that same idea in a different way he builds on that right so great fine art career if you want a gallery career each body of work builds on that idea and takes it to a new level so it isn't something new every time you make it a make it as fresh but you ain't but you build on it I think it's important to remember Todd and when he worked at art fairs he's shot in Southeast Asia and had to keep his work fresh but the demands on him conceptually weren't the same as it will be if you want to move in a gallery career so you want to get started gallery career you want to get your work out and let's say there are coffee shops banks there plenty of places restaurants in the city that want to show your work right and it's good if you're starting out you want to get your work out you want to show it to people it's good to get it out of your apartment out of your studio out of your head right it's if you live with your work all the time it's not healthy so put it on the wall put it in a place where people don't know you're the artist it'll be a real learning experience I gotta tell you and listen to what people say because you'll really get an idea of how people perceive your work whether it's similar to yours or did your concept are different right we all imagine our audience is gonna react a certain way but you all bring very different experiences and life's lifestyles to the work that you see and you all have a different opinion about it so if you want to show why do you show it a bank will you want exposure you want a coffee shop you want exposure generally there aren't a lot of sales in those places so I wouldn't count on a lot of sales but if you do have an exhibition there you want to invite everyone so they can see your work and if you work commercially whenever you have an exhibition you want to invite the people you work with commercially as well because it's a great opportunity to talk to the people you're working with commercially about something other than getting a job right they get to see your other work they get to see your photography you get to talk about other things it works really well when I own the gallery the gallery turned out to be one of the best things to my commercial career because people would come and look at the artwork they'd say oh you own the gallery you said yeah I do anything else like yeah I'm photographer I got a contract with Getty because the Getty team came in and they said why am we met and I said well I don't know we should and they said yeah come on in tomorrow I said okay I went in signed a contract right I mean it's just things happen right so if you can create this fine art space you can create help your commercial work as well so when you go to a coffee shop a lot of times they'll say we want 10 20 30 40 % I would never give a coffee shop or restaurant more than 10% of each sale and I think that's really important because you're not selling a lot you're spending a lot you're giving them free PR and you're bringing new people into their space right I think it's absurd that somebody wants 30 or 40% to sell your work in that kind of location 10% if they're gonna sell the work for you helps cover the sale if they're not selling the work and you're doing all the sales in addition to making it framing it hanging it and promoting their restaurant I don't see why they should get a percentage at all but I guess 10% is fair anything more than that I think is complete robbery to be honest so you're gonna be in those spaces be sure to negotiate don't get taken advantage of the other thing you need to think of when you begin to exhibit is framing right and two things when you exhibit it at a gallery everything our gallery contract is a 50/50 split right and 50% is a gallerist means there's not enough for me to make a living or you to make a living it's a it's a tough way to go right it's really hard so 50/50 and that's important because a lot of a lot of people will frame their work and take a to a gallery so let's say you're your prints sell you're only selling the print let's get to that you're only selling the print when you price your work it's the price for one print everything else is extra right if you mat it if you mount it if you frame it it's all extra right we're horrible businesspeople photographers we really are but like you like my print okay look I'll put it on the mat oh you need it mounted I'll do that for you then pretty soon all your profits are gone and you're wondering why you're not making any money right we're horrible so okay so if you're gonna take a framed print to a gallery the gallery Syst let's say the print is a thousand dollars and the frame costs you four hundred that's fourteen hundred some galleries will say fifty fifty we get seven hundred and you get seven hundred don't do that because they're taking half the money you spent on the frame right you get the four hundred for the frame back and then you split the thousand for the print if they mark up the frame a hundred dollars you split the hundred so each get fifty of the mark up you get your four hundred that you spent on the frame and then you get half the sale the print does that make sense right but a lot of people get taken advantage of and again you lose your profit margin right so okay you got your work and you've got these prints do you really love them and you know we love our work right and because you love your work it has to be in that exact frame and you need that matte and somehow photographers think the thickest the thicker the matte the better the the better the presentation right so if there was like an 87 ply met some of you would buy it right I mean who would you feel like know that print really rock but you you really need what you need to do is be aware of your costs out of the gate right because and you can easily spend seven eight nine ten grand on framing tenting mounting and putting up an exhibition and the problem is if you don't have sales that work goes home and it sits in your closet and then every time you open your closet you hate your work right you hate it a little more every time you look at it and there's ten grand and I could use that ten grand and why did I do that and I know that because I lived it for a while right like I had prints for my first exhibition for years for a while and you know and I I faced mounted him on plexi which sounds like a really great idea but when you put a quarter or half inch piece of plexy is really soft and scratches really easily - people need a very specific room to be able my hand hang that in and and third it looks really beautiful when you're at the lab and you're looking at your print and it's plexi over it but when it's on the wall I literally had people like fixing their hair and the blacks because the reflection was so good so people would go and look at themselves and you're like oh man it's my work like they didn't care so so be aware of the choices you make so if you're gonna frame things try not to spend too much money right and the problem the other problem is spending a lot of money is this let's say your let's say your print sells for $600 right and then you want to put a $400 frame on it because that frame that's what that should be right so maybe or maybe there's an impulse buy at $600 I'll buy that for 600 bucks but then you make it a thousand dollars what a grand I don't know maybe I'm not gonna buy it now I'm thinking twice right so you start with this many people will buy it for six then you put it here to grand cuz now it's maybe a little more and maybe next time and I don't know I there's something else I'd like and then you put it in the exact frame that you like that that print has to be in because that's what it needs to be the problem is not everybody in the world believes that and maybe it doesn't match their decor so now you've taken and there are this many people who love your print love that frame and want to spend a thousand dollars so you've taken this many people who might have bought that 600 dollar print and you've reduced your audience to this and you wonder why you're not having sales right so you need to watch what you're doing with your audience and how much money you spend the other thing photographers do is we love black frames and I blame it all on Ansel Adams because it's black and white and he'd frame everything in black and we love that and it's gorgeous so if I haven't no black frame is valid right the problem is if you walk into a gallery it's generally a white room right and most of you shoot color some black and white but a lot of color and if you walk into a room with let's say 20 a white wall with 20 color prints framed in black what's the first thing you see 20 black squares right you don't see the work because you can't beat the graphic of 20 black squares on a white wall you just can't right so I'm gonna suggest you frame and oh in white quite right and then you get a nice little shadow from the light so it throws a little shadows so it separates from the wall and then when when you walk in what do you see 20/20 photographs your work right which is the whole point you want people to see and engage with your work now if you're doing black and white and the frames are beautiful and that makes sense go for it but consider a little different way of framing and presenting that allows people to engage with the work my point is is you frame and you don't need to spend a lot of money and you also don't want to create things that are barriers to selling your work or barriers to your success at a girl when we own the gallery while on the gallery I used to give a lot of young artists and young meaning any age but new in your career right you can be any age and be an emerging artist and any age and be a mid-career artist it isn't an age thing it's just where you are in the life of your career so there was a girl May photo and she went and photographed with film a snowy on a snowy foggy winter day an old sports field in Baltimore so it was snowing and foggy and the Sun was coming up from the back and these pictures were backlit and it looked like a painting and they shifted blue in the early morning light and then you had these great graphics of like the gold posts and the shotput cage and all this kind of stuff and they were stunning absolutely stunning and they said I don't want any mats and I don't want any glass I just want a thin white frame around everything and I was like we're never gonna sell these and I said she's no no really I just want to do this I'm gonna let's do it and I said all right so I gave in and we put the we put the bled the photos to the edge and we put a little white frame around it and I had to say instead of walking up to the you know photo and standing back ten feet or five feet and looking like this people got right up to him they didn't touch him but they were right there looking at them and they were engaged it gave an access to the work a little less formality that allowed people to engage and the work was stunning so we'll talk about this work when we talk about additions well what we what we did was we started to sell them they started to sell like crazy and the framing costs were low so if somebody wanted a frame we got 20 by 24 frames for $80 or 129 nuts not store and we got the larger frames for a little bit more and if we needed to we'd sell the prints and we could pop the prints out so people can buy it mounted mounted and framed or unmounted and we paid Mays rent for a long time I think that first month she made $17,000 in her first exhibition and then we had people because they were selling so fast asking what was next right what's nays Mays next body of work what's her next we want to know what's next we want to get in on it before it goes for sale and you have the next exhibition right unknown artist what people loved it so much may completely freaked out couldn't take the pressure started a party too much took the money moved to went to Germany with her boyfriend and came back like two and a half years later with photo ironically photographs of garbage which I couldn't sell so you know sometimes success is a tough thing I think she thought it would just last forever but it freaked her out she never imagined so she did she did really well so one of the reasons those prints did well and so Todd he sells his work in unand as many as he wants and Todd was always angry because he always wanted a gallery career and my argument to Todd was if you have a gallery career you're gonna kill your career you'd say why and I said if I take one of your prints then it's stunning work then put it in my gallery in Chelsea I have to edition it I have to it has to be an edition of ten or fifteen or seven I can't sell unlimited edition uninhibit there's nothing as no such thing as unlimited edition but I can't sell an open-ended why a number of prints for the month that you do for 26 or 28 hundred dollars none of my collectors will buy it so for him the right choice was not auditioning his work I'll give you another example there was a gentleman who wanted to do a show and he had been photographing women in the south and around the DC area on Sunday afternoons in small black churches woman and beautiful hats and people who got dressed up for church they were beautiful beautiful portraits they're amazing he too wanted an exhibition he also had some small museums that were interested in his work and somebody was writing a play based on his project amazing and all the characters a list of the characters that he'd photographs who the names and they dress like that and everybody and the play was gonna tour so he said look I want to be in the gallery I want to do this I said I'd love to but I'll tell you what we can do same thing in my space we gonna do additions of maybe 10 12 you can bring them in we can charge X amount of money and we can do the show I'd be happy to have you I said but why don't you make it an additional 400 and then pick the four favorite characters and make an addition of 400 and sell them for like $200 each and then at every time every museum they're at or every time you have a play and he had a series of play houses that we're going to do it people can come out and be like oh my gosh I love Julie oh we should my picture Julie that'd be amazing we should put it in our wall right so instead of making a couple grand or four or five grand that he might have made with me if you wanted to follow that business model and so original prints signed prints at the museums and at the theater he had a chance I don't know how many tens of thousands of dollars we came up with what we multiplied it out and it just didn't make any sense for him to edition those prints as much as he wanted to be in the gallery it's all about the marketplace right it's finding the right market for your work and we tend to think of gallery careers or find our careers in a single way and that's not the case you need to be smart about it right so auditioning maze prints we got to get some things out of way about auditioning so if you edition if you make an edition of ten let's say of a picture a photograph of you that's an addition of ten it means there are ten of those in the world if you make an addition of ten 20 by 24 inch prints and I know there's some famous artists who have worked around this in other ways but they're famous but if you make an addition of ten prints in 20 by 24 and then you make 10 more 30 by 40s that's not a new addition it's now 20 prints it's not 20 prints of the same photograph right if I buy that first 20 by 24 and I think they're only 10 of those in the world and I give you $2,000 and then I find out there are 20 of them I'm a little upset right the art world strangely works on a lot of trust you tell me there are 10 prints of that I go tell this gentleman there are 10 prints he says I like it I'll give you 2,000 for one of 10 that's all great he's happy I'm happy you're happy but if somewhere along the line one of us isn't telling the truth our reputations aren't intact and then our careers begin to fall apart right so think about auditioning like if you want to do in addition of 15 in 20 by 24 and 30 by 40 go for it they can be more than one size if you want to do an edition of you know 15 and three different sizes go for it but be honest about how many prints there are in the world of that image if you have an image and this is the photograph and then you want to crop in on one of the people's faces and say that's another edition that's really sketchy to write photographers are weird like we we really we spend more time trying to find workarounds and actually dealing with the issue and and we can make work in a thousandth of a second right there's a lot of production a lot of time that goes into what we can and I have photographers who complain about having to come up with a new show every year and a half but imagine if you're a sculptor or a painter and how long it takes to make each one of those right yeah and these people come up with a new exhibition every year or two but a photographer and they create a new piece because they so onbut photographers if you have one piece that's selling well you want to sell it in every way that you can imagine right it doesn't matter so think about that if I'm at an Art Fair and I see a print and on the wall as a calendar or magazine that print is in I hope that makes that print more valuable right Wow look it's in the calendar we should get one look it's a magazine we should get one if your work is in a contemporary gallery and it's in a calendar it's not worth less unless it's the Pirelli calendar or something like that right because whenever you take something in a in a high-end fine art space and you put it in the mass media unless it's a story about you or a story about your work you've now devalued it right because exclusivity has a certain value so that's why I dishing makes a certain difference so one of the arguments against auditioning is well if I can sell fifty of these I'll make ever 30 of these I'll make that come out of dollars right but you could sell 30 at $500 apiece or maybe $400 apiece it's hard to sell 30 of anything let's be honest you know if you have if you have 20 prints your exhibition and you think you're gonna sell 30 of each bless you if you do but I think it's really hard but if you have an addition of 7 or 10 you raise the price as you move through that addition right so the first print and in addition number one costs the least and in resale in the secondary marketplace is worth the most why because it's the first and the first person pays the least for it because they're taking the greatest risk right and the resale is highest because the greatest risk was taken that person had vision they bought it there's different value and the price goes up as you go through the addition so one of the values of that one is you can and a smaller number of prints make a similar amount of money which is great so you really aren't out it's much easier to sell 10 prints and 30 just is and if I bought that first print at $700 and that third prints are that tenth print sells for $2,200 I'm telling all of my friends right oh my god but that you know you've got to meet this photographer it's amazing I bought that for some 100 is selling for $2,200 now I feel like my investment is paid off right whether it's paid off or not is a whole nother story but now they're inherently there's a certain value to that right a certain value so you're what you have our people will come back and buy your work over and over because you're creating value they feel good about what they've purchased right and you want collectors to come back so auditioning helps you in that way too it helps you build collectors and it also helps your collector feel like they're getting value so when you have another exhibition they're going to want to come back and buy one more they're gonna look for what you do next right makes us feel good I think it's important so value how much value is in a in a picture a photograph is worth honestly the cost of the paper and whatever you printed it with right 20 bucks 30 bucks 5 bucks right whatever that's that's the value of a piece of artwork that's the inherent value of physical value the rest is all perception right why is Picasso worth more because we believe the Paschal Picasso was a great artist and he did great things music by him whenever he goes to exhibition or to auction the work is more valuable people wanted collectors wanted museums wanted Picasso is very valuable artwork right photographs why is underskirts keys so work for millions of dollars well what he does now frequently first his work is like wall-sized but second he'll frequently make three prints one print goes to one museum one print goes to another museum and the third print is available to collectors you're talking about multimillionaires and billionaires who all want to be the person that owns that one gursky well you get to sell that print for quite a bit of money right because the print is already valid it's been placed with two museums as province right it's great and it's straight from the artist so I want to buy that third one as a collector right so there's a perceived value based on that right if you if you came to my gallery I worked with a lot of a lot of new artists helped build some careers and you could come in and let's say I could sell your work for $2,000 maybe $3,000 arrange it my gallery was really between eight hundred and five thousand ish those are my clients those are just the people who walk through my door you could take that same print to matthew marks and you go into matthew marks gallery and you'd say Matthew here's my work I hope you like me and he said oh yes you know and you have a meeting with Matthew it's like meeting the Pope and you know and he he looks at your work and say yes I like it and he anoints you and he takes your work and and he sells your work for ten thousand dollars of print same print why because Matthew Mark said it's worth ten thousand dollars of print and he has X number of people that whose careers he's built and work he's sold that has validated that ten thousand dollar price makes sense people believe that they trust it so you say well if Matthew marks can do that why doesn't he just take more photographers more people and saw their work well the problem is if if Matthew has one bad show and somebody's work doesn't sell in their career doesn't move forward happens right but if Matthew has two of those or three of those he takes too many chances and that work doesn't sell through in the long run then all of a sudden Matthew marks isn't Matthew marks anymore and the gallery isn't the gallery and all of a sudden he doesn't have that trust of the buyer and then everybody's career fails right so how are you up are up on the ladder the less risky can take you can send your portfolio to MoMA and they will look at it it can take a year sometimes but they will look at it right so in the curator at MoMA can really generally if somebody's curating an exhibition they can put your work in their show they can write I'm a curator and I believe in your work and I want to put it in the show I can put it in the show so what happens well if I include if I if I'm the curator MoMA and I have one show that's maybe not quite right and the reviews in The New Yorker and New York Times all of a sudden begin to question what I'm thinking and then I have a second one that quite doesn't make sense and pretty soon people don't you know wonder if my taste is the level is there and my ability to bring together a dialogue visual dialogue isn't as strong as it used to be pretty soon I'm you know the curator at the Toledo Museum of Art right because those careers and very quickly so the higher up you go the more power you have but the problem is the risk factor is much larger right so people can show your work and yes they can make your career and if you're wondering why that doesn't happen is because there's a risk reward at that level that's much higher than say when I had my space which was a lot of fun and quite frankly really indulgent it made money Mike I promised myself I wouldn't keep the gallery if it didn't make money but I had a lot more flexibility and I had a lot more fun I didn't have as much to lose as somebody like Matthew marks problem is when you want to be a gallerist at some point over for full-time fine artist that has to be your life 24 hours a day and I wasn't ready to make my clients the people I went to dinner with every night I wasn't ready to give it up and art fairs came in and I'm not a particular fan I love to go to the armory but I don't want to pay ten or twenty thousand dollars to be there and hope to make that back there they're not a lot of fun okay so additions so you're gonna addition if you want to be in a higher level gallery if you want to show in a gallery that's not just a small a small gallery local gallery and if you dish in your prints you're gonna raise the price and then the argument is always well if they're only ten what if they sell for a million dollars one day and then I don't get any money I don't make any money right sorry I keep hitting my mic I don't make any money right so what am I gonna do well you have artist proofs a DP artist proofs are one or two prints don't make an edition of ten and ten artist proofs that's not right but addition of say ten and two artist proofs addition to 15 two artist proofs addition to seven two artist rooms those artist proofs are yours they are yours to keep and do whatever you want you can put it in a drawer and pull it out when your works worth a million and sell it and you get your own million or you can do whatever you want now how many of you give away your work as gifts okay yeah sometimes here you go okay family friends right hey I want to give you some work I like you thank you oh my gosh I love it I'm gonna put it on the wall you go thank you you hug each other everybody kissed it's so amazing right right it's the same my my my my mom my mom my second year I got a degree and then I went back to photo school and my mom had a still-life that I made in my second year of compote Oh school framed in cherry wood on the wall forever like every time I went home was like oh so I love it so much like it's nice so anyway so you give it away the problem is the people around you are gonna be the earliest supporters of your work when you start to exhibit right and you're telling everybody around you the value of your work is free right so everybody preceded now you make great photography photography I've got a bunch of it it's great all right it's free so if you have an artist proof well I want to give you a gift okay that's great they're only ten of these and I have two artist proofs I want to give you one of the two that I have the prints sulfur a thousand dollars a piece I want to give you one of the other two that I have I'm gonna keep the other one oh my gosh you've now just given me a piece of artwork worth a thousand dollars right it's still the same print different context different concept you know lying it's true right now I'm telling everybody in the world oh my god I got my son gave me $1,000 he's these sell for thousand I can't believe I got he has to he gave me one right you're lying no is it is it wrong no it's it's true you create the same perception I'm telling you to manipulate people but it's business right you you need to understand the art marketplace the same way a gallery does it you need to understand you you create your value I can as a gallerist create your value but if you don't begin to create value for yourself nobody else will especially in the beginning right if you're not tuna I got to say the these socks is funny I did it just made me think of it these talks I when I first started speaking man it wasn't easy you know you go out and I would travel and I would talk about different stuff but you know it was hard and people wouldn't show up and over know us you are but I enjoyed this and I and I think it's important to give information that most people don't give to other people so yeah you need to build right a certain credibility in that and that gives you other opportunities you need to do the same thing with your art career if you don't want to build your career you can't just count on the galleries to do it for you and if I as a gallerist I could only do so much I had 14 people under contract and then we had group shows right so when you go to a gallery your goal hopefully is to get into a group show right because that's what you do you test run people in group shows and if my clients like it then I'll give you a solo show but you need to realize that I plan my exhibitions nine to twelve months out I had to because people were making work and I had to count on that and your gallery schedule is kind of like a little bit of piece of music right it needs to have a flow to it so you need to understand what's going to happen so you have a group show and maybe January or August or the slow months right in the summer and the rest are solo shows because those are your big sales and I bless you so it's a it's important when you begin to go to galleries realize that they can't show your work right away and if somebody I had a gentleman who wanted to show his work and he came in and he said hey you know what I got a show at the gallery downstairs I can't wait to show with you and I said it's gonna be a year and a half until I can show your work he said why I said because the year and a half until your collectors are gonna want to buy another piece for me for my collectors that's why it was the other thing you need to realize those galleries are if when I'd the gallery there were 350 galleries in Chelsea right so people had to walk by a lot of galleries to come to my space on the seventh floor at 5:26 a lot and they had to really want a what was in that space right so I learned very quickly when I started the space I showed a lot of cool stuff that I loved and people loved but nobody knew why they should come back to the gallery right it was just okay well that's cool and that's cool but I get a different group every month it took me a long time to realize that you always are a little bit but the best analogy I have are like clothing stores right if I say the gap you get an image in your head right if I see Versace Calvin Klein Chanel right you have different images in your head different price points different images galleries are the same thing whether it's individuals or corporations people had to want to come to my space because they knew the kind of work they get at a certain price point or a certain price range right and that's why they made the trek up and that's important is you begin to look for galleries you need to begin to understand the kind of artists at each gallery represents galleries aren't just galleries right each gallery represents a certain kind of work in a certain price range and sells to a certain clientele the gallery there was a gallery on this I only had one artist that did portraits that I could sell and that was part of a larger body of work but I couldn't sell portraits but marbella gallery on the second floor that's all they sold and I couldn't believe it he made me crazy right because he would sell portraits for thousands of dollars I couldn't sell one right so if you want to do portraits it didn't matter that we were just five floors apart you needed to be with Marvelle II didn't matter how hard I worked I just what it just wasn't in my world so you need to understand that when you begin to go to galleries it's really sometimes very specific less specific when you get into smaller towns less specific when you get outside of major metropolitan areas but I think it's really important that you understand it's frustrating the other thing you need to realize is if there are let's say there are 10,000 galleries in in the United States if 9990 for those galleries hate your work you can have a really great career right if six got six galleries want to exhibit you that's an amazing career right so we get really frustrated well they don't like my work they're not I'm known fit they're I don't fit there where am I gonna fit I can't believe it I'm really frustrated I'm gonna quit you need to find your voice you need to find your space right that's really important the other thing that happens is is you own a gal where you get more people sending your work and less of it becomes relevant it becomes really hard to find people to fit your space why because you become more defined right so there's a lot of work that I liked that I loved actually that I couldn't sell so sometimes when you get a no it isn't that your work is horrible it just doesn't fit my space right because I can't sell it to those clients you on the other end you're there and you're like oh my god everybody it's my work well no maybe it just isn't right for where you're sending it to or maybe it isn't the right time or maybe you need to give it a lead time so there's a lot of rejection in our world right I was an exhibiting an artist I would walk into places and say do you love me and you know hope somebody would and thankfully a couple people did and a lot of people didn't that's okay I mean my first I just told my students as a Parsons Mike though I showed a bunch of abstract work at one point and it was it was manipulated film abstract and it wasn't like photos of a wall abstract so when I was at Art Center I started to make these and my professors told me very nice and we appreciate your effort but you should put these away in a drawer and never show them in anybody so I put him in a drawer and I closed the drawer and I opened the studio is a photo studio at the time in Chelsea and a friend of mine down the hall William was an artist and his gallerist came in and in his gallery soon her husband came down and they said oh nice to meet you what do you do bless you and I said well I showed her my commercial Magnus said no what else do you do so I open that drawer and I pulled these out and I was really a little shy and they said oh my gosh you need to make these big you should sell them these we'll see you can make money and I was like really now like yes I blew him up and I got a gallery in New York and I bloom I got a gallery in LA and we sold them and it was really great right so if you listen to everybody that tells you that you shouldn't show your work and shouldn't do what you do you end up not doing anything right it was a really great lesson for me the other lesson is that I tell my students this is part of the art world that we talked about is to create something different something that's next right if they're not creating I have a career if they're not gonna pass me up then we're both in trouble right so you need to allow yourself free yourself up a little bit there's no nothing wrong with making prints like Ansel Adams and shooting landscapes are doing beautiful portraits or nudes or whatever you want to do maybe lifestyle your family documentary all of that is valid but allow yourself some range to experiment and try right make some things that make you nervous one of the best fashion shoots I ever did I I got the film back and I looked at it and I was so nervous I just put in a drawer for three days because it was so new to me but it was really great move forward in my work but it made me really nervous that maybe it was wrong maybe people didn't like it right so lie yourself that range that's what though our world is about right you you should have that freedom it shouldn't really be kind of fun so galleries there is a hierarchy to galleries is a gallery in Milwaukee as good as a gallery in Chicago probably not a gallery in Chicago is as valuable as a gallery in Miami I don't think so is a gallery in Miami as good as one in say Sam Reston maybe they're equivalent one in Houston is good as one in San Francisco depending on the gallery probably not is a gallery in New York stronger than one in San Francisco generally outside of one or two is one in the Lower East Side as good as one in Chelsea maybe in a Williamsburg as good as the Manhattan sorry no first time first time somebody said that they're moving to BK I asked I thought they were moving a Bangkok I mean the BK so where's that come from so so anyway so Manhattan no is one in Chelsea as good as one on Upper East Side maybe it depends on the gallery right there's a hierarchy there and you need to build your career up that hierarchy there's nothing wrong with that success begets success and I think that's really important you need to start to exhibit because everybody who takes a chance on you and your work makes the next person feel more comfortable taking that chance right so you need to find on the end you need to find a place to begin to build as some exhibition history in the show and resolve how you're gonna edit your work and have it make sense there's nothing wrong absolutely nothing wrong with exhibiting around the country or outside of the city if you don't start here right absolutely no shame in that and it doesn't mean you won't show here you just need to slowly build it your career if you move up the ladder if you're matthew marks you want to go back and show my gallery know right if you're selling if you're selling work for $3,000 and then you want to go back and sell that same work for $1000 no you can't do that right you can't so in terms of sales we'll go back to pricing in terms of sales it's great like again I if somebody wants to buy one of your prints for $5,000 you want to say yes but if that's an addition of 10 you've now set the price at $5,000 for all those prints maybe you'll sell them for 5 grand but maybe you won't right and now you're stuck with the whole body work that you can't sell maybe a $3,000 sale is better in the long run because it allows you to build your career this is a gallery so I probably can't take you on at $5,000 if you're if you're new things to consider right so gallery hierarchy you want to build your you want to build your way up that gallery of hierarchy and you want to build credibility because that makes it easier for me to begin to show your work so you want to work your way through that um see sorry I've gotten I talked and then I just get so far off track as I just start to talk whatever loan everything so when you go to a gallery let's talk let's talk about working with a gallery as a gallerist I would promote your work so I'd put your work in the gallery guide or wherever else if you wanted an ad in art in America or Art Forum that's expensive and it doesn't always pay so maybe if you've exhibited before and we might do that or you might pay that cost or we might split that cost but when you're starting out I think it's hard to expect the galleries to make that so let's say in my little space let's say I needed to make let's make it easy let's say I need to make five six thousand dollars a month just to break even that's not to live that's not to feed my dog it's just to break even pay the rent pay my staff pay promotion pay for that wine electric everything else right so you want an exhibition in that space that means in in in your exhibition I need to sell ten thousand dollars worth of your work just to break even think about that twenty thousand dollars worth of your work if I want to make five grand a month just put it in a little perspective right so it's important when you begin to approach galleries to understand your situation in theirs from your side okay so you're gonna make five we're gonna sell ten thousand dollars worth of work how much of the prints gonna cost you how much is the framing are you gonna ship for us we're a small gallery if it was your first exhibition you would ship to and from the gallery it was a risk I was taking a chance maybe you didn't have an exhibition history you shipped to and from if you had success then I'd pay one way and you would pay one way and if you had success again then I would pay the round-trip right every time you evidence the ability to resell and grow and continue to make work there were benefits and we would absorb more of the costs because I thought that was fair and it seems to make sense there's some galleries that will pay for framing there are some galleries that will pay for other things those are hard to find out of the gate right so be aware of your expenses when you're going into this it's gonna cost you something to build a career but as a gallerist I need to think about it economically and think how much how much am I making in does this exhibition make sense so again with you when you go into a gallery imagine that and think about what they they have to make in terms of insurance I know gallerists who have damaged work and handed it back and not given anybody a dime for it I don't know I had a woman who had an award-winning piece Laura I can still picture her face she had an award-winning piece we put it in the center of the gallery it was a sculpture I swear to god we were at our desks and we just watched it go our hearts sunk my heart sunk I had to call her and tell her that her award-winning piece was now in pieces on the floor so no what do you do his photographers what do you do so let's take a photograph laura was great I paid for the repair I gave her something towards the value of the work she repaired it we had it back in the exhibition but I also gave her a little extra because you know just because so as a photographer let's say something gets lost or damaged right if the piece sells for $5,000 and you Orin get five hundred you don't get a thousand dollars you get your five hundred right I think that's only fair you get the percentage of the sale you were gonna get you don't get the whole percentage of this a lot of people if something established want the wholesale price you get your percentage that makes sense right insurance we insured everything in our space for water fire damage but you want to make sure that the gal where you're with does the other thing you want to do is get a delivery memo when you drop off your work you make a list of everything that you drop off the like the name of the print the size the material the addition number number one of seven and the quality like it's an excellent condition right and then the value and you set that value with the gallerist right you don't say they're worth twenty thousand dollars a piece if you don't have an exhibition in history all right you list everything that the gallerist gets they sign it you sign it they can keep the original you can take a xerox why can you take a copy because if you have a copy nobody can change that copy right they can do whatever they want to that handwritten copy but you have you have something that you can prove that that's what happened so whenever your work is sold let's say two of those prints are sold you go back in now you get in an updated memo they give you a memo saying we sold number one of seven of this and this size at this cost we sold number three of seven at this you get that back right why do you want that because you want a running total of your inventory with galleries I know photographers and other artists who've given a lot of work to galleries who then say we don't have it what do you do you say I'm going to sue you in this they're like okay sue me what do you have you go to court and you say he took my work and so I never got this guy's work right there they're bad people right these aren't everybody but you need to protect yourself it's a business so get a delivery memo when that work is when you get that work back when you get seven prints back make sure there's a signed copy that the gallery has it says look you've got your work back we hold zero prints right so everything is clean and everyone's protected I had an artist after we had to let her go we would bring our artist hard fairs and I thought that was really nice because they get to meet the collectors the collectors could meet them and one girl a collector came up and it turns out she was trying to make backroom deals at the Art Fair with collectors for her like you bide for me it'll be less and don't worry I won't tell him and and so at the end of the art fair I didn't invite her back and I let her go and she screamed and yelled and why do you do it I can't believe and I told her that people came up and told me and then later on she wrote and she said you still have my work and I said no I don't have a delivery memo you've collected everything you gave me it's signed it's gone right all those things are important the value of a relationship is important the relationship of the gallery is really important what happens is my my best advice for you today my best honest my best advice is don't be crazy and what happens is when somebody will write you look like maybe but no you look at well what what happens it's people people like your work and you get excited right like they love my work right I get excited so you get sent an email and whenever you're that happy don't respond because you say things right like one guy he sent me these really beautiful images of little paintings and I said you know what I really love these and we've been corresponding I said I really love these if you ever get to New York please stop-in bless you please stop in and show them me in person cuz I'm interested in you view an exhibition his response was I hope I cast a spell on you that guy's not getting near my dog he's not getting here right like haha oh my guess he just said thank you I can't wait to meet you we would've been fine right and another another guy it was in they're both from Seattle so he gets something in Seattle he he rode the water yeah hey he so I had actually I had an artist who had an exhibition who couldn't get the work done in time they had the June slot really great slot and they just wouldn't bring in the Prince so I finally said if you don't have them in you don't get the exhibition we cancelled there's a person I've been speaking to again I said hey man I've always liked your work I have a space open let's do it he's like yeah great let's do it and we're going through the details almost so I get the this email Tom I really think that if your gallery website listed the prices of all the work on the that you're selling your gal would be much more respectable incredible and I really think that that's really I mean in this whole long list about how I need to change the websites the gallery's worse credible and respectable so I wrote him and I said really thank you for the advice I think it's important and I do think it's important that you work with somebody that you find credible and trustworthy and respectable and I think you should do that I wish you all the luck in the future Thank You Thomas and there was about a 10 minute delay and I must have gotten 20 emails back ba ba ba ba I didn't read any of them right don't be crazy we weren't friends we were business partners we might have become friends but at that point here's the way I run my business if you want to be part of it and we can find a way to do that great I'm I'm I give you a contract which we'll talk about so I'm not just saying send me your work I'm not saying don't give me a delivery memo and if you want to work with somebody who works in a certain way you should find those people right but but once I gave him the exhibition all of a sudden he was like you know fellas she's so meals not that he shouldn't he should work with whomever he wants but you need to find that relationship don't be crazy had a guy come in who had really beautiful inkjet prints really beautiful landscapes I couldn't sell ink well first I have a silver fetish I admit it publicly openly I love silver prints I collect them adamantly around the world but I my collectors too for whatever reason not because I did that but they just wouldn't buy inkjet from me right they just wouldn't whatever you call them week a or lease a glycol she clay thank you she claims inkjet right but people and they know it's a giclee non-sitting check so didn't pigment right it's three actually pigment print and spade sprayed pigments you should call it a pigment print right there they're inkjet prints it's there actually it's sprayed carbon so they're carbon prints call it what it is so I said look if you can do these in silver I will give you an exhibition and he was like really and I said yeah let's see if they translate and you're happy and I'm happy if you want to do a test print or to go for it and come back so he's like yeah okay great he was really excited he walked out he came back down the hall and he's like how dare you tell me how to run my art career your jail I'm not I'm not telling you to change a thing all I'm saying is I can sell silver prints and I can't sell the prints you brought in I like your work but I can't do it he was angry he came back three days in a row I tell you three days in a row to tell me how wrong I was and how I was trying to ruin to tell the artists how to do their careers as sorry it's just the way it works right so sometimes it isn't personal it's just the way that where he works right don't be crazy the other thing is somebody said somebody sent me a sample of their work and they sent it certified mail so I had to leave the gallery and go to the main post office you know how much how not fun that main post office is and stand in line closes face thinking the IRS was after me right and I get this letter and it's from a guy who wanted to be sure I got his submission it is the only time I wrote a handwritten response immediately I opened it I wrote back I said you what are you thinking I thought it like put it back in sealed it and send it back like don't just don't you know like remember we all want to know if somebody saw our work but one of two things happens when we'll talk about protion one or two things happens when I see your work is I either like it and it gets put in a folder of landscapes or portraits or whatever you do for future exhibition or I keep samples in a drawer or it gets thrown out those are the only two things that happen right I like it and I consider it or I write you and say can I see more I go to your website whatever you have or it doesn't work for us and you shouldn't feel bad either way but I had a guy from Texas head I think I'm sure was the artist but some guy called said I am the representative for you know whoever we'd like to know if you received the work and what you think like man this conversation 90% of the time isn't going to end well right because if I like the work out would have called or written or I would call in the future I don't like the work and I had to be honest I said I don't remember the work well that did that hurts right but I you get like hundreds of submissions a week sometimes I didn't remember the work he was very upset he was very hurt can you get me some feedback I'll describe the work like it's just so you it's hard right I know it's really hard but you need to remember his stuff goes in sometimes people if they like it they'll keep it and they'll contact you but if you follow up it becomes really awkward sometimes and more awkward for you than anyone else and in terms of promotion I I still think like you can email write emails great it's free you can email you always want to contact the gallery director the gallery director decides what the shows are the exhibition's are other people working together but the gallery director does that so you write the director and the beautiful thing about email is it's free the other horrible thing about emails delete write because if you have time you can flip through a bunch of emails but it's really easy to hit deletes you don't want to do that you can send what I would send is hotknot hi I'd like to have an exhibition with you we all know that's why you're writing right I'd like to introduce myself here's a body of work on the Salton Sea I hope you find it interesting I've enclosed I've included two samples you know 72 dpi 5 by 7 8 by 10 size is all you need in the email here's the link to my website here's a link to my Instagram here's a link to wherever you want me to go thank you for your time and consideration that's it if I like the work I'm gonna click on the link right it's that easy I think mailing things is still great because fewer people do commercially or not I have people who are editors commercial editors who who say that nobody sends stuff in anymore so I think mailing a card is really great a little card image on the front your contact information on the back again you know the kind of you need to tell me what the medium is right if I don't know what kind of medium you're making this photograph in I can't imagine it it's a postcard so send something in you don't have to spend a lot of money that's great your website I think your website should be really clean and simple you don't need to spend a lot of money on a website the websites about your work and if you think that getting a website with moving things and music and everything else is gonna make your work better it isn't right you don't need a better website you need better work right it's about your work so so all I want to see is the work and I want to be able to drag and drop it I know that's horrible I was on the border bass and piano copyright and I'm all that but it you want to be able to see the work I want to drag it and drop it into folders so whenever you title something if you're gonna put a little watermark on there or if you're gonna title all your files put your name and add the title of everything if you email me something put your name and your contact information your name and your email and the name of every image you send right because if that gets thrown into a folder and then I have to figure out who sent that to me six months ago and we crazy it's never gonna end up in the exhibition right or if I'm curating an exhibition I have 20 people and I'm gonna curate it down to 20 images and all of a sudden I have a folder full of images without anybody's name on it you just you just hate people at that point cuz it's so much work to go follow it all the way back always put your name and your file when you name your files right so you can mail things and you can also make a package right a little promotional package you can put a thumb drive you can put a couple don't put original prints but you can put a couple of promotional pieces you can put your CV right and your CV should have your exhibition history maybe if you have any reviews if you have art education anything you know listing that might be of interest you can do an artist statement and an artist statement shouldn't start out generally to a gallery in New York you know I grew up in Wyoming loving the prairie and because I love the prairie I begin to photograph every morning because it brings happiness to my soul that might be the case but I really want to understand what those landscapes are about in Wyoming not the fact that you were you were drawn to them because you grew up there right so our statement should describe what you do right how you do it what your process is what the concept is are these beautiful landscapes which there is nothing wrong with are they like we talked about the pictures you take in New York as you're walking to your work at B&H are they landscapes about something is it traces of man and the in the landscape of the desert and Wyoming is it you know you know nature taking back landscape is it about something else is it about space is it about right something else so tell me what it's about what's your concept make it really clean and simple a half a page artist statement is enough you don't need to make it bigger right and it doesn't need to have a lot of philosophy and if you're using words like simulacra you probably shouldn't write you're getting way off I don't think you need it you just need to tell us what it's about because again it's about the work if the work is solid then I'm gonna read the artists statement right but if the work doesn't hold up I'm not getting that far it's really important if you've had any press maybe you can put samples of the press that you've got in your packet right and you can mail that now if your work is about environmental space and organics recycling and sustainability don't put it in a shiny glossy black folder and a pen or a plastic bag what I mean like your your packaging should reflect everything you make should reflect what your work is about and what you're about so if you make a promo you make a business card you should reflect your work if maybe it has a blue font or green font maybe it's a recycled paper maybe it all every touch everything that I do should support your imagery and your concept in you and what you represent what your work represents that's really important you don't want to subvert yourself right a lot of this talk is about not doing things that will get in the way of your being successful right because that's the problem lot of people do things that get in the way of their being successful so the packet a lot of galleries say that they won't accept submissions right just forget about that send it in they want to limit the amount of submissions they get and I think that makes sense send a postcard and send a packet I think what you should all do is put together a promotional packet and you should all go to like five galleries in Chelsea and you know that girl with a black hair that's pulled back really tight and the black turtleneck was skier she's scary right but if you go together it's not so bad and and she going that's true she's scary right she scares you she's yeah see how Canton she's meeting sometimes I don't why but she's mean so no she doesn't smile she just looks at you right yeah and she shakes her head and goes back like I don't even know why you're standing at this place so go hook up take your package put it on the counter write that little write this excuse me sir what's that and so I'm leaving this for you and they said excuse me sir we don't take submissions I want you to slowly turn around and walk away so you me sir I don't know it's like a bomb is sitting there right she's got to do something with it so what's gonna happen that packet cost you a buck fifty they're either gonna throw it away or they're gonna be like oh they're gonna look at it which is all you want right so have them open it up send it send it in the mail they're gonna look at it right it's worth the dollar fifty take the chance and do these things if you want a career you're gonna do them you have to do them right because if you only sell the gal at some of the galleries that take submissions you're never going to end up in the places you want to be and so take risks but together a nice packet portfolio drop-offs people oh don't go into a gallery I have to this has happened people come in the gallery and artists are very knowledgeable sometimes sometimes but art and they would look at the yard and we talked and we'd be having a conversation and I'd spend 40 minutes thinking we have a sale and then the person would turn to go oh by the way I'm an artist I'd love to show you my work like oh you just took 40 minutes of my time the other half is if I when I worked at the gallery if I was there myself and I was on the laptop I was on the computer writing I was working didn't look like it but I was working right because the opening we have sales at the opening we have sales at the exhibition but it's kind of like a showroom most of my sales for most of my artists took place after the exhibition closed people see it and then I'm like oh I have a client in two months it's gonna need a new boardroom I'll be back or oh my gosh you know remember that piece you saw Thomas gallery that would look great here we should go back right so a lot of the sell-through is after the fact which is why your contract a gallery contract that we would have would stipulate my contract was for the New York metropolitan area in surrounding area if the gallery I was with in LA had Mexico to San Francisco to Nevada and they were so amazing they could have done more if anybody offers you a contract for the continental United States unless they're famous don't ever sign it because they're nuts it's so hard to sell across the entire country it just doesn't work if somebody wants worldwide rights to your work don't do it if they want any kind of ownership rights to your work don't do it just don't sign those contracts it should be regional it should apply to wherever you're gonna sell so we had a contract there was a one-year renewable unless either person in writing submitted they wanted to leave the contract right so I had to give 30 days 30 days you're gonna leave the contract I asked for a six-month tail to sell the work after the end of the contract why because if you just had an exhibition and you leave most of my sales are gonna be six months and those next six months right so that's what I would ask for I stated I would pay for the lighting the space the wine certain amount of advertising what you would pay for you pay for the shipping we had that all stated in the gallery contract I think it's important to get a gallery contract a lot of people don't use them but I think you should ask for one you need to stipulate what your rights are you need to be clear about your expenses up fronts you don't so you don't end up paying more than you should what else smoking I think that's about killer contracts something popped into my head okay so you're gonna go in portfolio drop offs portfolio drop offs are great call ahead ask if you can drop off a portfolio or some work or if you can drop off a digital portfolio I like to see prints if your work is giant bring these smaller samples and one giant print so I'm you know nobody's walking around with you know this heavy box you don't need to Matt your work you don't need to slip sheet your work right all I need to see are the prints and you don't need a fancy portfolio a black clamshell box is fine right somebody can get a black or one of those are order online in archival box absolutely fine just make sure your name is in it and your contact information and a leave behind a promotional piece right because if I like it I want to take your promotional work I want to hold onto it sometimes people would bring their work in the gallery and I'd say can I keep a couple pieces in the flat file so that was a problem for some and not for others but if I had a client coming in I don't want to show the little work and see what they thought right so I'd keep some pieces in the flat file we had one girl who brought in paintings I put three of them out on top of the plateau she left by the time she came back to get him the afternoon we'd sold all three so we gave her a of solo show like that right it was great we each made a few thousand dollars and everybody was happy people like to work the response was positive so sometimes I'll ask you to leave the work we'd be aware that's gonna happen when you take your portfolio in everything needs to be immaculate no deigned corners no dirt no anything else why because if you have a dink corner or a little dirt and you tell me that when we have the exhibition it's not going to be like that it's not true however you present yourself to me is how exactly what our working relationship is going to be like exactly I don't care how much you promised there was a woman who had pressed this thick but she'd Xerox them all cattywampus and made notations in pencil and and clipped them together with one of those black clips great I respected her press but I knew that working with her was gonna be like that kind of mangled mass of unfollow will stuff clean and simple make it easy again don't give people reasons don't work with you all your primary thing you do so your portfolio has to be immaculate if a print gets damaged you need to remake it I'm sorry you have to sometimes when prints get to galleries you go to galleries they get dinged right a corner gets dinged a portfolio gets moved it hits the corner a little bit something some people aren't very nice I mean like not my fine art portfolio but my commercial portfolio would come back with coffee rings on it sometimes you know it's just like breaks your heart but what are you gonna do right you're gonna ask you know Condon asked to pie for pay a new portfolio you don't write so make sure everything is immaculate because that's how it is when you go in to meet somebody you don't need to be in a suit but you need to be professional you need to be put together if you walk in and your hair is sticking up on one side and you look like you woke up and you think that makes you an artist great but that's exactly what its gonna be like to work with you and I don't want it I don't either enough issues right so just be presentable be professional it makes it's everything your mom told you you should do right right comb your hair dress nice be nice to the person right present yourself well that's this whole talk is I should like I should rename it like things your mom said that you don't do but I think it's important I think it's really important so how you present yourself matters drop off from portfolio can take a couple days it can take a couple weeks it can take a month it depends and the larger the gallery the longer it takes so you need to be patient the good thing is generally the longer somebody keeps your portfolio the more interested they are in it you can call back and check but don't call back and check every day right because just don't I'm not gonna talk to you right it's like the computer it's like when you get that email I really like your work just back away from the computer right when you're when you're like oh my gosh I can't like here's a great way to put it if I wish if I have 11 shows a year that's 11 things in one year for you that's 365 days of torture right for me that's 11 right 2 months is 2 shows 2 months is 60 days of wondering why I haven't gotten back to you it's the same thing in the commercial world right you just need to remember there's a little different perspective so you need to be patient even when you get frustrated right I'm not saying don't follow up I'm not saying don't the gallerist needs to be professional too but just remember there's a different time valuation there and I know it's really hard so you're gonna take photos in I want to talk about signing photos when you when you okay well that's actually let's back up in your packet you're gonna make a list of the photos that you gave people right and on that on that list it should have the name of the photo the year was made the year it was taken if you want you can put the year was printed some people like to buy prints that were made closer to the year that it was made but the year that it was taken the addition number addition of ten number two of ten whatever the materia the size of the prints right twenty by twenty four sixteen by twenty addition of ten and 16 by 20 or in addition of ten and these three sizes I wanna know the size oh no the material what is it printed on and what is it printed with right is it a digital see print and is it a pigment print said of carbon print is it Oh what is it is it a platinum print right so I want to know what the material is because I need to visualize that and if you tell me ninety percent of the time I understand what that print looks like in that scale we're not having to see it right away right so I want all those things you're gonna make a list of that right so if you send me JPEGs or you give me a thumb drive with a bunch of stuff on it there better be your CV your artist statement and a list of each of those images and all of that information for each one right because as I go through those images I need to know now as you edit that portfolio that you're gonna give people remember all right we do this first we put in one photo that we love that we know shouldn't be in that series right look at you like Oh busted there's some shame there it's great Marion you even blushing like oh man but it's true the problem is that one photo subverts the rest of the portfolio right because I don't know if I'm going to get those 19 or that one and maybe we had a really great day and maybe I love the person in the print or maybe May just my personal favorite but it shouldn't be in the portfolio right edit it down it's better to have 15 strong images in 20 images that aren't his that aren't as good because I'm gonna imagine that if you have more they're gonna be the weakest images in that batch right the other thing I want to do is if I open up a folder full of images I'm gonna I'm old school I'm gonna lasso 20 of them I'm not gonna win with Lightroom over it I'm just gonna well you know select five of them and open them up as if those five aren't good the other 20 aren't gonna be good right I can select I should be able to select any five in there or any 10 and open them up and I have an idea of what your body of work is about the strength of that work and what your voice is if that's not the case you're not editing correctly right you need to edit tight has to be a visual style a single visual style not the same image over and over but a certain style so I can identify the photographer needs to have a concept right and a theme so I understand what the concept is visually it needs to flow together conceptually it needs to flow together if it doesn't it's not a consistent body of work it's not for me an exhibit ax baladi at work so you need to be where when you add it right and it tightly don't show more than 20 I don't think you ever need to show more than 20 if you have 40 or 50 don't show them all if I like those 20 I'm gonna ask you for more always because I want to know you have more if you only have 20 show me 15 because I want to ask you for more what else do you have you can't give me if I space I would exhibit between 20 and 22 images photographs generally if you're giving me the 20 that I have to show that's not gonna work because you don't understand how my space works right I had a little milk on one side and I had the flat files and was behind the desk and you know when you walk into a space everybody wants the space but oh by the door which is crazy the space you want if that's our door you want this space right here because if I walk to the door of a gallery and look in I'm not looking around the corner I'm looking at the stuff over here to see if I want to come in right if that's the door maybe here but you probably want to be here right so think about that is you begin to place your work in galleries and think about how galleries need to layout the exhibition it isn't a linear like you imagine I had to think of well if somebody's coming down the hallway this way or this way what are they gonna see in what's next to it and is that complement that color across the room and is there a dialogue across the room not just around the room right there had to be a conceptual and a visual dialogue around the room it had to hold together it had to be tight and the line of sight through the door had to be what brought people in if it didn't we weren't gonna have anybody come in the room right so as you exhibit as you edit you need to be gonna consider those things it's really important so signing photos you can assign contemporary imagery right if you're gonna show in a contemporary conceptual space on the back or the verso upper left or lower right hand corner you have your name I printed you're gonna have the same thing name of the print the year it was made the addition size you don't need to put the material because I have it and then you can I always put the copyright I suggest my artists put copyright why do you put copyright a lot of galleries hate that but let's face it if you're the artist and you're making your work and somebody buys that prints and they imagine because they bought the print they have the right to reproduce it or put it in a book or put it somewhere else that's wrong all right they don't have the right to do that so if you put copyright they don't I put copyrights on go on my invoices because I think whenever you do to livery notice or something else you need to put copyright and if you state that then if somebody uses it it's it's knowledgeable infringement it is an accidental infringement so and then you sign it right here here you want to sign sign it with a sigma micron pen a sigma micron pen is not like a sheet it's like a sharpie but actually it's archival more Cavill than a sharpie so won't ever bleed through or damage your print if you're signing a black and white you can also sign it in a number two pencil that works as well if you sign your prints on the front that's fine my friend at the Art Fair always did certain galleries will want to see your name of the title of the piece your signature on the front but remember in a conceptual gallery that becomes a reference to a different era right signing on the front and putting them title the piece the Edition number on the front is a reference to a certain era of photography now there are some people who want to see the prints and they want to see your signature that's great I always say if you sign the matte people can take off the matte and then you lose the print you lose the signature if you want to sign the print sign it under the image area don't sign on the image area right and then somebody can matte it and cover it or they can uh not mat it and not cover it whatever they want right if you feel the need to sign it on the front but remember if you're working in a conceptual space that needs to work with the idea of your photograph it needs to work with the concept of the piece in the context of a Contemporary Art Gallery makes sense a little bit right okay we're getting there a couple other things corporate sales everybody wants to sell the hotels they're amazing it's a hundred rooms the problem is I don't know hotels pay so very little they pay like a couple bucks a print I had somebody offer me they wanted a large prints that they're gonna pay me a lot for but then they wanted small prints and they wanted him delivered framed and I was gonna make they wanted a thought like a thousand um but I was gonna make like a dollar or something on each one it wasn't worth the effort I mean if thousand dollars to be great but I'm not gonna give away my work and uninit and and go to all this trouble and probably lose money for just a couple bucks right where you do make money in like hotels and places is in the lobby area right lobby people pay a lot of money for work for lobby they'll pay it for restaurants I sold a bunch of work to of high-end Marriott's who wanted nice original artwork in their restaurants they're willing to pay a couple grand a pop for that that artwork it's amazing corporations corporations want they need to fill wall space right so we did the Swiss recollection up on the top six floors the Helmsley building right and the weighted Bank of America one part of Bank America so what they wanted was a bunch of different work and I should say a certain amount of the art collection is the collection but some of it is what the executives like so we had some guys who wanted baseball you have any baseball like where am I gonna get amazing baseball so the woman I was working with was here visiting from LA and she went to the met one day and she found a guy with a table outside of the met with a bunch of baseball pictures Yankee Stadium and stuff and she said I'll give you a hundred bucks a piece can you have 20 of them here tomorrow and he's like yeah and she's like great and she wouldn't pick them up and weigh em like 20 baseball prints for the these guys who want a baseball was amazing but we didn't know where to find him one guy wanted chips we found a Robert Mabel deal Robert Mapplethorpe photograph the battleship ones hello and that's what we got the guy we found a Robert Mapplethorpe battleship okay so this a variety of work my point is if you're gonna so do corporate sales is they take a variety of work no politics no religion no nudity right people get sued for that stuff no what do you want I mean it seems lately everybody wants to mate all that but you can't have that in the workplace because it makes you liable right so no politics no religion no TV 16 by 20 is I think the small size most corporations will buy why because I need to fill the hallway so I'll buy prints for like eight hundred dollars a piece to put in the hallway sixteen by twenty twenty by twenty four their matted right maybe a thousand twelve hundred dollars hallway lower-level people's offices you get to the higher level people you're talking a grand a couple grand a print right because we can make them bigger when you get a CEO CFO or Lobby sky's limit ten twenty fifty a hundred thousand dollars depending on the piece so if you make Lobby size work if you can make giant pieces we had a guy for the Helmsley building thing he took a photo and then projected it and and sketched it in carbon on a big gorgeous piece of paper and we framed it and the people who own the space are so happy right so local companies love pictures of their local area New Yorkers love pictures of New York right five an accounting firm or law firm and I have a great picture the Brooklyn Bridge or whatever that's great you can't take pictures of the Chrysler Building Rockefeller Center in those places and just sell prints of that they can be in the skyline but many of the buildings particularly those owned by Tishman Speyer are registered there of their own their trademark so the Chrysler buildings trademark you need permission right the Hollywood sign is trademarked by the way if you want to sell posters of the Hollywood sign Hollywood gets 10% of every sale you go to sell prints Hollywood gets 10% of every sale certain things are trademarked that's all because people own it okay corporations so corporate sales are great you should contact corporations there please like Progressive Insurance estee lauder Bank of America they have huge corporate art collections you want to contact the corporate art buyer or the corporate art buying committee which is a nightmare because it's like eight people all trying to decide what's good they all come into your gallery the first time happy because they're called selecting art then they come back a month and a half later not liking each other at all because they've been arguing from up and half oh and then or sometimes it's the Director of Facilities the same person who's managing the pipes in the carpet is choosing the artwork it's just the way it is there there are corporate art buyers independent corporate art buyers that you can get in touch with there's a woman who sells a list of those it's not up to date and I bought it years ago and I called her and told her first she sells it out of Florida but lives in Toronto and then and then she said I said it's not up to date and she said I know but can you send me any updates cuz I could really use that no I'm not you should give me much money so she had no shame so anyway look him up you can find them online corporate our buyers there's some really amazing ones around they'll take your work they'll take it in corporations and they'll show it interior designers will take that work if it's a corporate buyer or an interior designer they expect a 10 or 20 percent discount that's how they make their money so if it's a thousand dollar print they get it for 800 they sell it for the thousand dollar list and they make 200 to print makes sense so if somebody came in the gallery and it was ten percent five off of me five off of you is twenty percent is ten off of you and ten off of me right it's just fair we would split that discount because if somebody interior designer or a corporate buyer likes your work it's a consistent sale it's what you really want you love it it's a beautiful thing to have happened grants really quickly grants are amazing thing people will pay you to do the work you do and I'm gonna make this part really short because there's a whole nother lecture but if if I want to if I want an exhibition and a book nobody's gonna give me a grant to do that I want to go to the Amazon take pictures and make a book in an exhibition I want you to give me money for that like why I want to go to the Amazon and I want to photograph the effects of climate change on indigenous tribes in the Amazon basin I'm gonna come back I'm gonna make a website I'm gonna do a little educational program I'm going to partner with a scientist and we're gonna do an exhibition in a book as part of that we have fund that yeah of course you see the difference nobody's gonna everybody gets angry why won't you make my book why won't you fund my book why won't you fund my exhibition well no I'm gonna fund your idea that helps me meet the mission of my foundation foundations the Foundation Center is right up here on Fifth Avenue 70 or 72 Fifth Avenue second floor it's the largest foundation repository place you can go to learn about grants to do your work go there the University of Michigan has our Michigan State has a great list of foundations in places you can get grant funded it's a beautiful thing I get grant funded pretty much every year at least once it's a beautiful thing that people pay you to do what you love and pay you to travel to do it but you need to meet their mission you can't just have people pay you to take pictures you're what you do has to meet their mission their goal is a foundation okay releases releases are really important as a and then I'm gonna wrap it up and take questions releases so do you need a release as a fine artist no legally are you protected yes right does that mean you cannot be sued no of course people can sue you for anything right so two examples one I'm gonna show the seedy underworld of suburbia my Uncle John he's having some beer we're talking I said John is amazing let me take pictures of you in the recliner and watching TV he's like yeah he's in his underwear he's like yeah I love that you love me I love ya we're taking pictures is a great time right you have an exhibition the prints are up on the wall they're selling for fifteen hundred dollars a piece John comes in he goes oh my god I can't believe you're making $1500 a print on me I want a part of this right yeah it's a car he'd like something I can't believe you're taking a bad look at that right the other example is you wake up in the morning your partner is laying next to you you're in love lights coming through the window you've never seen anything more beautiful you pull out your camera you started taking there's no my go we need to share our love with the world I want to take pictures yes photographing yes you take these pictures you these beautiful series of images they're nudes your happen to put them up you walk into a gallery then you know you plan the gal were you planning exhibition make the prints and then you split up well the problem is a few people hate you more than the person who used to love you so they walk into that exhibition like oh my guy can't believe you're showing me to the entire world and all our friends I'm gonna sue you I can't believe this you've ruined my life get the release when you're having beer in love right get the get the release really get the release at the time you take the pictures you have to you won't get it after the fact if somebody says yes to you photographing them get the release and there's this thing called a pocket release I don't I don't understand it it's like a half a release on a half a page of paper how is that protection it's like half a condom right it just doesn't work like you need to use get a full release people will sign it you have the right to use this picture perfect for perpetuity give them $10 I gave you $10 if you're gonna give them a print plus one 11 by 14 print color print black-and-white print plus you know 10 digital files at 72 to spell out exactly what you're giving that person have them put their initials on what you're giving them have them sign it and take a picture of them holding it I kid you not I I can't tell you because it's lawsuit protection take a picture of a person holding it really quickly fill oh look horse should do krysya heap he put his camera do you know this story he put his camera on scaffolding on the street took pictures of people on the street triggered they walked by there's a picture of a civic gentleman he saw the pictures in the gallery they were selling for twenty five thousand dollars a piece he wanted to sue he felt he was being taken advantage of if you could sued like that it's two or three years of your life a lot of time a lot of money I've had friends who've been put out of business by lawsuits because they can't afford it right you don't want to spend two or three years fighting a lawsuit with somebody because they feel they've been wronged right so did Philip have the right to use that picture because it was in a public space and the rest of context yes did he have the money to fight that yes to the gallery that he worked for fighted yes did they have a financial investment sure they were selling editions of ten for $25,000 and it supported his whole career they fought that lawsuit they can you can't get a release right you don't want to be involved in a lawsuit it's just not worth it so if you're doing street photography do need to walk up to everybody on the street no but there was a guy who photographed a girl in a beer garden in Estonia and then he sold the photo to Monty Python when Monty Python was on Broadway and they had a big picture this girl coming out of the windows she visited in New York she saw it and it was her and she proved it was her and she sued and the picture was taken down she got a lot of money from people don't count on it being on the other side of the world social media or their media right you need to have social media and I'll make this quick the Silver Apple weather you have to have a social media because every editor every gallerist I know looks on social media your Facebook page is yours your professional Facebook page should be professional your Instagram if you want to have one where you're doing whatever fine okay but you need to have a professional page as well right a place where people can go and see your work if you have an exhibition you announce it there the beautiful thing about like Facebook or Instagram is if you like my page I feel I have I would never email people and say have an exhibition because I feel like I'm intruding but if you like my page I want to say I'm gonna be at the bnh event space speaking I have an exhibition coming up I have a talk coming up here hey look here's my new work right you've said you want to know what I'm doing so I'm gonna let you know right it's a different relationship and I have to say the best example is I do a lot of work in Russia I'm there about 60 days a year I used to be there about 120 days here so I travel I curate a lot I carried have curated exhibitions at the Armitage Museum the last seven years I curated a lot of I could do a lot of curation so I was there and I was at photo plus so it's great I'm in New York you guys understand that was at photo plus at the Javits Center coming down the escalator and there was an editor coming up he's like hey Thomas like hey how are you like fine how are you and it's like I'm good he said hey love that work in Russia I said how did you know I was doing in Russia she said saw it online and I said I've never seen you online he goes no I just look right he never liked anything he I never saw his name I didn't know he had a page but he looks right made a difference that's opened doors for me all I can do is give you my personal experience there I had students dragging me on the Facebook I had students drag me on Instagram it was like really you know what am I gonna show and I don't show many pictures of myself because you know I'm not that interesting I don't think I'm not interesting but I'll show you what I'm doing because and it's really made a difference it also makes a difference in to the people you work with it just does it's just where we're at so if you want galvers some people to see your work if your work is out there they can find it if your work isn't out there they can't find it right and that now in this world is a way that people find it don't put all your good pictures don't put your entire series watermark them if you wish right but you need to be you need to be visible you need to be public that needs to be part of your marketing at this point it's just the world over we're in I know I've been talking for a long time it looks like it's been about an hour and 15 minute 45 minutes thank you all for being here for being patient it's a lot of information I hope it's useful

Channel: B&H Photo Video

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Id: tQAmQ0sLgeM

Length: 96min 17sec (5777 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 30 2019