Contemporary Art Photography Comes Into Focus for Collectors

Art Business News, Oct, 2001 by Barden Prisant

Once ignored by the art world, work by contemporary photographers is highly collectable and is garnering top dollar at auction houses and galleries

When is a photograph not a photograph? When it is a work of contemporary art. And the mainstream art world's growing acceptance of artists whose chosen medium is photography has led to stratospheric prices.

At this season's Christie's Contemporary Art evening sale, where top paintings by Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat were sold, a photograph taken just last year by Andreas Gursky sold for $292,000. In fact, photographs comprised almost one-third of all of the works sold at Christie's that night.

Shoshana Blank, director of the Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Santa Monica, Calif., declared that a photo can be "as successful as an oil on canvas." Cyril Pigot, director of Nikolai Fine Art in New York, added that even the photographs by very young artists are priced as high as oils. In the auction world, according to Amy Cappellazzo, international specialist head for contemporary art at Christie's, photographs "are at a point of parity" with other media.

So how have photographers managed to muscle into the sacred territory once reserved for painters and sculptors?

Breaking into the Contemporary Art Realm

Not all photographers are granted entrance into the exclusive club that is the "contemporary art world" According to Matthew Carey-Williams, vice president of contemporary art at Sotheby's New York, the successful ones have a "sarcastic, jolly air ... a funkiness" Duane Smith of the Lisa Sette Gallery in Scottsdale, Ariz., said it is the "way they're using the medium and how they're getting to their final image. With Cindy Sherman, (for example), there is more of a process going into it."

It would seem contemporary art photographers are also more than mere craftspeople or good photographers. While the fashion/celebrity photos of Herb Ritts may be appealing, they are not sold at the contemporary art auctions. Rather, they have been relegated to the traditional photography auctions where daguerreotypes and Walker Evans photographs are offered. This is because they are essentially deemed "really good photographs," not "really good art."

That photographs have been accepted as art at all is indeed a recent phenomenon. Said Carey-Williams, "Photography has been the most important medium over the last five to 10 years."

And according to Pigot from Nikolai Fine Arts, "Our civilization is better expressed through this medium." Hence, it is unsurprising that photography has been gaining in popularity with collectors.

Collectors New and Old

Contemporary art photography has gained a foothold with the Generation X/30-something market. Pigot said his gallery has been targeting younger and less experienced collectors, and this is a sentiment echoed by many others in the field. According to Joseph Gilbert of the Jean Albano Gallery in Chicago, the typical photo collector is "younger and open to exploring new media."

Carey-Williams agreed. "Younger collectors amassing collections start with photography because it is more accessible."

It also has the advantage of being, in many instances, more affordable. According to Blank, younger collectors have been focusing on photographs in recent years because "they get more for the money." While some photos indeed can sell at the auction houses for $200,000 each, at Shoshana Wayne and at Jean Albano, images by some younger, less prominent photographers can be purchased for prices starting in the $1,000 range.

More established collectors, however, have also been taking note. "Our [regular] clients have been willing to add photographs (to their collections) for some time," observed Smith. As well, Carey-Williams has seen "a lot of crossover between collectors of standard contemporary art and photographs." This is, of course, necessary to support the $200,000 prices fetched at the auctions.

A Question of Editioning

Traditional art collectors have been climbing on board owing to certain developments. One is the tacit agreement between the photographers and the collectors that the former will honor their "editioning" policies. Thomas Struth's photo "Pantheon, Rome," which sold at Sotheby's New York last November for $236,750, was from an edition of 10. What if Struth decided next year to dust off the negative and print another 107 It would cost him approximately $50,000, but the pieces would have a market value of more than $2,000,000. A 40-to-1 return would be hard to resist.

Nevertheless, according to Cappellazzo of Christie's,"There is an intense honor system, and I don't worry about it being violated" She also believes she knows how photographers decide how many prints to release.

"There used to be an aura of being unique," she said. But now, if a total of five are printed, "two will be in museums, and two will be European collections. These serve as an ad for the one being offered for sale (in New York)."

It just took some time, she noted, and then "photography got hip to the proper editioning of things. Keep something in a small edition and make it an icon."