As you might expect from my previous post, I am being extra careful to be pro-active in the jury process. I'd love to get feedback on something from other event coordinators and some artists.
Photographer "___________" a talented artists regular in my events has some really cool prints. I like them enough that I have purchased a few.
Then I found an identical image at Target on a cheaper substrate.
I ask. He tells me that he had licensed the image to Target for a short time five years back, and that it was no longer being licensed.
I tell him he cannot sell any image that had been ever licensed at the events I coordinate. Simple enough. It does not belong. I am not showing his work to the jurors. He is not eligible for my events.
To be fair, I would like to try representing his thoughts. He is welcome to comment on this post if he feels that I don't get it right.
He says that "at least 20-30% of art fair artists license images or sell through- Fine Art America, GBC, Red Bubble, or Image Conscious".
He also pointed out that my prospectus does not specifically mention "licensed" art.
He is in some major fine art shows. I won't mention them here.
Tell me event organizers, what's your thoughts on this?
Artists? I am confident that I am making the right decision. Your thoughts?
Comments
Read the original post again and keep on topic.
This thread has nothing to do with outsource printing. It's about having images in your booth that were previously licensed for posters.
Larry Berman
No offense Larry. Removing a post dosn't mean it wasn't posted. I agree that works sold should be allowed. Number them and I think the value will be more. But to say that the discussion is not relevant to the thread is not true. We call them ART FAIRS. Not flea markets where you can get it here for less. So if you sold the image then disclose it. That is all. But I don't think buying from large print houses should be allowed. It drives prices down at the art fairs. We can't have art fairs with nothing more than $30 prints. And I am saying everyone not just photography.
nothing to do with the thread and I'm going to start removing unrelated posts.
Do not hijack someone else's thread.
Larry Berman
Larry I love photography. Black and white gets me every time. My point isn't just photography but anyone who has all their work outsourced. I think works that were sold to be mass produced are fine if its disclosed. But photographers always seem to take this as a jab to them. That maybe guilt?
Come on guys.
Take your distain for photography and start your own thread.
This thread was about letting original work into a show where the images were previously licensed. Nothing to do with the direction you're trying to take the thread to.
This thread should be closed now. There's nothing new to add and the director made his mind up before even starting the thread.
Larry Berman
Well said Barrie. I also have a problem with photographers who don't print their own work. I do metal. Images on steel sheets created from controlled oxidation. No acids or chemicals just water. OK tap water so chemicals may be there. I can't call an order pieces. I also can't produce a piece in an hour. I am starting pieces now for fall. When I am at shows anymore all I see are photographers. My pieces are hard to photograph. I went through 6 so called photographers before I found one who could shoot my pieces for my website. Everyone is a photographer anymore.I have a friend who has a cruise scanner and has don work for the Vatican, The Met and many more. I have been there when people (I refuse to call them artist) have him change and correct the image. I do consider photography art. But only when the person is doing everything themselves. If not then they are no better than buy sell.
My gripe isn’t with photographers or photography. My previous comment doesn’t question the validity of photography as an original medium and I never have and never will. I have always been on the side of photography and a constant promoter of the medium. And with that in mind, I’ve provided a detailed synopsis (see it toward the end of my post) of my early art career which I started in photography.
My first gripe is with the shows not allowing me and other 2d artists to bring repros of paintings. I’m still always bringing all the originals I ordinarily bring to every show and I’m hanging them on all the walls accordingly. But how does bringing a bin of repros reduce the quality of the show? I restate what I said in my previous post, they are the same process as many of the photographers use since they are made from digital images that I’ve either made in camera or with a tabloid scanner, processed through PhotoShop and then printed through Epson pigment printers. The “quality” of the materials is the same and their price point is in that sweet spot EVERYONE knows they need in their booth to survive at the shows, the price range from $35-$200.
By only being allowed to bring original framed paintings, my price has to start much higher than that. Ours start at $1,250 for small finished works, but sometimes we prepare something for which we are able to charge a little less. Even if we priced our small framed original paintings at $800, we’re only then dipping into that price point photographers might be charging for 40x60 behemoth works. I can purchase a 40x60 digital pigment print for less than $200 from someone who offers those services. Which brings me to my second gripe.
My second gripe is that shows allow photographers to have someone else other than themselves print their work for them. The very idea that someone else besides the photographer is making the prints categorizes them as collaborative works to me. How does it not do that? How is it that all these art/craft fair shows state in their rules that photographic prints can be made under the photographers direct supervision by someone else rather than stating that all work must be photographed and printed by the photographer and that employing individuals besides the artist applicant in the printing of photographs constitutes a collaborative work? Lakefront Festival even states in their rules that “photographers are encouraged to make their own prints.” ENCOURAGED? This might be the reason there’s disdain for photography at the shows. Photographers aren’t required to even know how to use the software and equipment necessary to print their own work and even if the photographer does know how to use it, they aren’t required to do it. And those that employ someone else to print their work for them probably don’t own or lease the equipment, either. The equipment is across town or wherever in some established business employing imaging specialists who do nothing more than scan and print and stuff for others who are paying them to do so.
Why aren’t etchers and other traditional print makers allowed to take their plates to a studio and have someone else do the inking and pressing?
Certainly there are mediums that don’t lend themselves to reproduction. Some sculpture comes to mind right away, as if the particular piece of wood has a certain characteristic known only to that piece and therefore can‘t be reproduced. It’s highly unlikely a repro is possible. But sculptors who cast bronze can also make a mold wherein they can cast resin to offer at a much greatly reduced price. There the “quality” has been greatly reduced by the choice of materials, but by God it’s an original and that’s all that counts, right? The bronze edition will be three thousand dollars per piece and the resin three hundred.
If we decided to make much less expensive originals we would most likely be lessening the quality of our work. It’s that plain and simple. I’ve seen a few artists be successful doing it some of the time. But I’ve seen this attempt from many who aren’t very successful doing it because they’re just trying to comply with rules they think force them to produce lesser expensive merchandise. They already know they cannot compete for sales with their more expensive better originals, so they try to make something legitimate to offer for $80 or $125. And what happens? They either only sell that work or nothing at all. And I can assure you that selling original paintings at that price is making no profit whatsoever, and it probably means going into the hole.
It’s a simple fact that many patrons of the fairs are coming there looking to purchase gifts and impulse goodies, even at the shows touting original artworks only. So $35 to $200 merchandise is absolutely necessary in order to remain competitively priced.
You think having higher prices is an asset? Everyone knows that’s a joke. It certainly is a great feeling when someone peels off 3K in my booth, or better still we win Best of Show where there’s some good prize money and someone also peels off 3K. That’s what we call going “from zero to hero.“ So I could brag about that a little, but it doesn’t happen every day, at every show, or even every season of shows. What does happen every day at a every show is that $35-$200 merchandise sells, and I cannot provide any “original“ artwork for that low price.
I haven’t studied her output lately so I probably shouldn‘t argue about it, but Cindy Sherman has always exhibited chromogenic prints (that’s type-c, the typical color photograph process). And she doesn’t produce very many in each edition, like 6 or something? And of course they’re huge prints! So maybe the newer ones are “archival pigment prints” and she’s ditched Fuji Crystal Archive? If so, I suppose they’ll just get bigger.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I too went to college for photography (1989-1993) and I set the curve with it in the art department. In addition to the required studio art curriculum (mine was steeped in photo history as well), I devoted two college independent studies to understanding the physics and chemistry involved by studying Minor White (both his Zone System and metaphysics), Ansel Adams (The Negative, The Print, The Camera, and The Lens) and Eugene Smith (his overexposure process as well as his phot) and applied the principles to my own work. While doing the college work I also produced as much self-assigned work as any professional could imagine. In fact, the pros at several commercial studios and others at a prominent ad agency were stupefied by my enthusiasm and output. I was completely immersed in it and possessed by it. I shot every kind of camera imaginable, from Minox subminiature to 11x14 view with a big-ass brass barrel lens without a shutter, and every kind of film as well as different developers and papers. I processed all my own black & white and some E-6 on reels in steel tanks. With the Minox film I just unrolled it and processed it in a tray as I did with the 11x14 sheet film. 4x5‘s I processed in a Combi tank. I juried into the first mail it out juried show (University of Delaware Biennial) that I entered in fall 1989 and did my first outdoor art fair in spring 1990 by exhibiting 10 framed photographs on the courthouse square at Magnolia Blossom Festival at Magnolia, Arkansas. Early successes fueled my fire. I exhibited my work otherwise in juried shows, galleries and arts centers as well as once in store front windows of a small town that I frequented. I bought all darkroom equipment and set up the darkroom in my home in 1990 (Beseler 23C with color head and a year later an Omega D2 ProLab with Zone VI cold light for black & white). I did Polaroid emulsion transfer process in its beginning (1991) and did some with a couple of colleagues using a pin-hole camera. I taught photography at the Arkansas Arts Center for two years from June 1992 until August 1994 and shared one of Ansel Adams‘s bona-fide portfolios to the class that had been lent to me by a colleague to do so (he bought it for $500 way back when it was first offered for sale by Adams, he also had every issue of Aperture from the beginning as well as Edward Weston prints and others). Also while at the Arts Center, Ilford Photo loaned me a processor for P-30 Ilfochrome printing of transparency film and I guided five students with that. While working with noted architectural photographer Tim Hursley, besides making all of his black & white prints for international clients and publications for two years, I printed and developed using the platinum process which requires enlarging negatives since platinum is a contact printing process. Exposure times for platinum prints can be 6 or 10 minutes since it is a slow speed daylight printing process.
Gosh, I’m not gonna keep boring everyone with all this hoopla. Sorry for running on and on and then not finishing it, too. I just really do know photography up one side and down the other. Guaranteed. So much of my life has been devoted to it.
Good point Stan. I think some of the problem is not with most people or even photographers. Limited to some means limited to as many I can sell. What I don't like is when people don't even do the printing. Especially on products like cards. I have heard people say more than once. " That show was so good I had to order more." So you produce a handful of pieces a year and then just buy them? To me you are no longer an artist at that point. I sell my shit so I can make more shit. Why? because I have to or I will go nuts. There are to many doing the artfairs who are no longer artists at heart. That is why less young people go to artfairs in my opinion. They want to see something original and exciting. Not cheap crap made in China. Even if your image is on that cheap crap.
I believe I might bring a unique perspective to this topic. As an illustrator (my show banner identifies my business as "Stan Bruns - illustrations"), I am first an artist, but secondly a commercial artist, ie, someone producing artwork with a commercial purpose. Sometimes it is used to market/sell a product (most often a book or magazine, greeting card, calendar, consumer item, etc). Much of my work falls within this category.
I DO believe in full disclosure, ie, I inform the purchaser that a piece is a reproduction or a print. Often I also show the original painting or drawing (I actually prefer to do this whenever I can). This settles any doubts as to the piece's provenance.
Those shows that restrict the sale of reproductions (or insist on certain identification standards) are fine with me. If the rules are to show only original paintings and drawings, fine, I leave the reproductions and prints home.
I have not seen rules precluding the participation of pieces which have enjoyed commercial success, but IF those are the written rules applied to a given show, I would, again, have no trouble complying.
APPLYING such rules after the fact, however, seems wrong to me. Perhaps this is an additional proviso which some show directors might consider adding to their rules, if they are so minded.
Mass production of an image, design or product happens, and so long as the copyright holder and creator is properly compensated, more power to them.
Photographers do NOT typically differentiate between licensed prints of an image and the same image printed by them and sold at an art show... And perhaps they should. Traditional print makers and artists making reproductions differentiate between these items, and there are pervasive rules requiring only signed and numbered limited editions be sold as reproductions at some shows for this reason. Perhaps some verbiage similar to these rules would work for photographers.
I have had very successful illustrations run out of their numbered editions (they sold out) whereupon I drop them from my line (to meet the rules). Perhaps, if these rules limiting reproductions and hand pulled prints are too confining for photographers, a general loosening of the rules governing prints and reproductions is in order?
Avoiding double standards is usually a good thing.
Michael B, you are spot on regarding the FL shows. Many FL shows are really just local city sponsored cultural events (The Delray Affair, Deerfield Beach Festival of the Arts, etc.), not high end art shows. The goal is to bring business to the city. Artists are simply part of the attraction. Prints/repros are the only way to go for these shows. Btw, I got a set of those "sheets" you mentioned. Not a bad deal for $20. Wouldn't frame or hang them on my wall however...
-
1
-
2
-
3
-
4
-
5
of 6 Next