Street Scene, Charleston, SC
I read Lenscratch blog this week (a blog worth following, too) and had two other people point out the recent post about having a difficult time of making a living as a “Career Fine Art Photographer” (hereinafter CFAP – sorry, the new job is really kickin’ in here). Well, golly, the concept of a CFAP is something I just can’t get my head around, although this month has been really great for me. Seriously. Cindy Sherman and I between us averaged about $1.75 million in sales this month. So, I have that going for me, which is nice. (For those of you that pay attention to the arts scene, one of Cindy’s photographs sold for $3.5 million this month. Me, I sold the usual number.) Between Cindy (bless her heart) and the other folks out there not being able to arrange shows and make money as the CFAP business, I got to thinking about this.
So I started thinking about the shows my acquaintances and I have been able to mount in recent memory. There’s my show (I’m always thinking of myself first, you know) of the transformation of a Public School in my home town. Another show of abstract color photographs illustrating the balance of forces found in one’s life. There is a show of hand-made fishing boats, the people that make them and the culture surrounding the fishermen. Lastly, an exhibit of street photography (people still do that!) of how we represent genders in society. The last topic was esoteric, but appealing to a wide audience.
A few years ago I heard Joyce Tenneson lecture at the Southern Photography Triennial exhibit at the Gregg Museum at NC State University. Joyce Tenneson is an accomplished and successful photographer. Her thirteen published books allow us to do an extensive evaluation of her body of work. In publishing her books she noted that books of her photographs had total sales in the order of 1500 to 3500 copies for each book. This seems like a small number (and it is) but it is relatively successful number in terms of books for a CFAP. One of her books, “Women of Power” sold over a half million copies. Why such a big difference between the two types of books?
My good friend and fellow photographer Brooks Jensen podcasted (Brooks' Podcast site is here.) on one of our many of our conversations last week. The summary of the podcast is, “A mandatory prerequisite for autobiographical art would be to have an interesting life. So, if you choose to make autobiographical art, you should be interesting. Not just to yourself, but to others.”
I think that is the key thought for this whole affair. If you make art that is of interest to the viewers and not just yourself the chance for success in gaining acceptance for your work is greatly increased. I think the experience of Joyce Tenneson covers the concept perfectly. Present work that is of interest to you, sell 3,000 books. Present work that is of interest to others and sell 500,000 books.
Something to think about.
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