Celebrity photography clicks with collectors: while photographs of famous stars are a constant hit with collectors, vintage, black-and-white images of classic icons dominate the market

Art Business News, March, 2004 by Julie Keller

When it comes to photography, celebrity sells. Today, media superstars, including sports heroes, pop divas and movie stars, are at the forefront of news and pop culture. The Internet, countless TV shows, magazines and newspapers fuel a celeb-crazed population that is always watching to see what their favorite stars are doing. This same mass-media exposure also keeps more historic celebrities easily accessible. It is for these reasons that photographs of famous people have often proven a lucrative option for art dealers at all levels of the market. Additionally, celebrity photographs often attract a more diverse collector base and not the "traditional" art buyer.

"Celebrity photos are the easiest items to sell," said Michael Randolph, executor to the estate of famed celebrity photographer William "PoPsie" Randolph. "They require little if any advertising since our media keeps the images alive daily with commercials and movies."

Many experts agree that celebrity photography enthusiasts often purchase art for more than just decoration. "Customers who purchase limited-edition prints usually buy with the intention of decorating their home, as opposed to customers who purchase open-edition celebrity photos to show their enthusiasm for a particular celebrity they may admire or relate to in some personal way," said Frank Nappi, product development manager for Art.com, an online retailer for prints, posters, photographs and custom framing.

"I would say that celebrity photography is most popular among people who aren't usually art purchasers," agreed Randolph. "I think that all of us have a famous person that we want to be or to emulate in our daily lives. Owning a great photo of a celebrity brings us that much closer to them."

But in spite of this fascination with modern-day celebrity, black-and-white photographs of stars from the 1950s and '60s seem to dominate the marketplace for star-studded photography collections.

"Black-and-white has a presence that color can never match," explained Randolph. "You have to go with the classics. The photo styling and the aura of the celebrities back then were carefully crafted by the studios and record labels to create larger-than-life personas. Nowadays, the shelf life of a celebrity is a lot shorter due to burnout and over exposure. We tend to get tired of people a lot sooner nowadays due to a shorter attention span and the constant bombardment of advertising. The great ones never told you how great they were ... You just knew it."

Jeff Linton, vice president of sales and marketing for iPHOTOART, a publisher and distributor of photographic prints, agreed, saying he has witnessed strong sales of the iconic, black-and-white photos of classic Hollywood movie stars and sports heroes. "Like other iconic photographs of historic events or well-known places, historic photos of celebrities take collectors back to another time and place, where life was simpler, perhaps," he said.

But even among the classics, there are some celebrities who stand out. Randolph said he finds that the most popular subjects include Elvis, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Bettie Page, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison. "They transcended their time and are more recognizable to more people nowadays than most 'modern' icons," he said.

Nappi said he finds the most appealing stars include Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Elvis and James Dean. He also said that the company's best-selling sports figures are Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

"The best-selling movie and music celebrity photos, with the exception of Johnny Depp, are long-standing, such as the Sinatra clan, the Rat Pack, Paul Newman and Jackie Gleeson from 'The Hustler,' Audrey Hepburn from 'Breakfast at Tiffany's,' Bruce Springsteen, Cary Grant and Grace Kelly and Al Pacino from 'Scarface,'" he said.

The popularity of vintage photography and stars, however, doesn't preclude gallery owners from finding success with photographs of modern-day stars. Indeed, the more recent stars are a little closer to home in the minds of collectors--they can actually picture themselves as the next Britney Spears or Jennifer Lopez. "People tend to gravitate toward people that they find interesting," said Randolph. "We all dream of being stars."

Among the top modern-day celebrity photo subjects at Art.com, many of which are wall posters, are Johnny Depp, Dave Mathews, Orlando Bloom, Shania Twain, Hilary Duff, Britney Spears, Tupac Shakur and Angelina Jolie.

In fact, many say that Britney Spears is actually helping the celebrity photography market in the same way Madonna did in the 1980s with her book "Sex." Spears' series of artfully orchestrated magazine cover photos in publications such as Esquire and Rolling Stone, have been wildly popular, according to Randolph. "She has to learn how to keep that image hot for the public like Madonna has done for over 20 years," he said.

There are some drawbacks to consider when thinking about carrying photographs of modern-day celebrities in galleries, however. One of the main problems ties into the aggressive paparazzi that hunt down stars in an effort to shoot a scandalous magazine cover or sell images to one of the countless entertainment news TV shows. This can lead to over-saturation of the market and the prevalence of lower-quality work.