market for photographs

There is no single market for photographs. The expansive nature of the medium is such that many independent markets coexist and occasionally overlap, but the term is mostly understood to describe the art photography market. This has been growing since the late 1960s, when Lee Witkin opened the first successful gallery devoted to photography in New York. Since then specialist galleries and private dealers have emerged; museum, institutional, and private collections have been formed; and regular auctions and fairs, such as the annual Photography Show held in New York by the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) since 1980, have become established. The greatest activity has undoubtedly been in the USA, but gradual acceptance of the historical and artistic role of photography has promoted wider interest and the market can now be considered truly international in scope.

Beginnings

Photography began to be offered for sale soon after its invention in 1839. Many photographers, such as Roger Fenton, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Gustave Le Gray, exhibited and marketed their work to a public of collectors. Printsellers and dealers in photographic equipment and materials often doubled as agents for the sale of photographs, and even lent works for sale to the annual salons of leading associations such as the Photographic Society of London or the Société Francçaise de Photographie. Photographs were sold individually, either mounted on card or, unmounted, to paste into albums. Made-up albums containing a pre-selected range of images were also available. Early British collectors included Prince Albert, Queen Victoria, and Chauncy Hare Townshend, whose collection formed the basis of the now extensive holdings at the Victoria & Albert (formerly South Kensington) Museum, London. As early as 1865, Cameron was able to sell 80 photographs to the same institution through her dealer, Colnaghi, although this was not a regular occurrence. At around the same time, the rising popularity of the relatively inexpensive carte de visite and stereograph formats resulted in collecting activity on a considerable scale.

Slow progress

The turn of the 19th and 20th centuries saw growing interest in the promotion of photography as a fine art and, to some extent, in the history of the medium. Works by Cameron and Hill and Adamson were rediscovered and published alongside those of contemporary photographers and artists in Alfred Stieglitz's Camera Work. Meanwhile Stieglitz was exhibiting photography regularly at his Gallery 291 in New York and occasionally succeeded in selling work. However, his sales technique and pricing policy were unorthodox and the gallery relied heavily on free labour and favours to survive. Julien Levy's New York gallery opened in 1931, with a retrospective exhibition of American photography organized in collaboration with Stieglitz. But although Levy continued to show work by both past and contemporary photographers, commercial considerations compelled him to intersperse photography shows with more saleable paintings and sculpture. Even Helen Gee, who opened her Limelight gallery and thriving coffee bar in New York in 1954, could not generate enough sales to convince herself to persevere after 1961. Other galleries in Paris and New York showed photography, but none of these early establishments could sustain themselves by selling photographs. Nevertheless, they played an important part in raising awareness of photography, which, in turn, encouraged a few pioneering collectors and curators to devote more attention to the subject. For those few collectors in the mid-20th century interested in early photography, the market remained informal and uncompetitive. Their most fruitful source was the flea market or the antiquarian bookshop.

Quickening pace

Museum interest in photography developed patchily. On the initiative of Wilhelm Weimar, the Hamburg Museum of Art & Design began buying daguerreotypes in the 1900s, and in 1915 acquired part of the important Juhl collection. In 1910 the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo hosted Stieglitz's International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography, and bought a dozen items from it. MoMA, New York, established a photography department in 1940, but it was many years before other institutions followed suit. A few museums, such as the Victoria & Albert, had holdings of photographs dating back to the 19th century, spread over different departments, but no specific department or curatorial staff responsible for them. Only since the 1970s has there been a gradual proliferation of dedicated photography collections in museums worldwide. The Metropolitan Museum in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the National Museum of Photography, Film, & Television in Bradford, and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh are among the international institutions with substantial collections of art and general photography.

This rise in museum activity has coincided over the last c.30 years with a rapidly expanding network of galleries and dealers specializing in photography. Europe's first photographic auction was held in Geneva in 1961; Petzold in Augsburg began in 1975, Christie's in London in 1976. Meanwhile, degree courses on the historical, cultural, and theoretical aspects of photography multiplied. These seemingly disparate developments have fused into the informal economic network that forms the modern market. It now includes the primary sale of contemporary work as well as the secondary sale of images from all periods up to and including the present.

Hesitation and doubt, scarcity and value

For better or worse, photography has become a tradeable commodity, but acceptance of this has been slow, and relative to other antique and art markets the number of people involved remains modest. A major inhibiting factor has been photography's infinite reproducibility. The introduction of the negative-positive process invented by Talbot heralded the beginning of mass circulation of prints from one negative, and many 19th-century photographs were printed in large quantities for a mass market. However, the disrespect shown towards such early photographs over the next century or more was largely responsible for the relative scarcity of material today. Tracts of photographic history are no longer easily represented by original material because the prints have been destroyed or lost, or because surviving examples are too damaged or faded to reveal their original purpose.

The limited edition has been encouraged by galleries and dealers for contemporary photographers aiming to sell their prints, and editions commonly vary from a very few examples to 20 or 30 prints from one negative. Very occasionally, editions of over 100 are issued. Ironically, many of these limited editions result in more prints being made than was common before their introduction. For most of the 20th century, certainly until the 1970s, there was little real demand for photographs beyond their primary (e.g. fashion, advertising, photojournalistic) function. Having supplied a client, photographers would move on to the next project, at most producing a few additional prints for a portfolio or for publicity or personal use. There was no proper market and few exhibitions, so little requirement for more than a few prints from any one negative.

Most publicity relating to today's photography market emanates from public sales where record prices are achieved, creating the impression that only very expensive works are changing hands. The reality is very different. The breadth of the market, with prices for single photographs ranging from a few pounds or dollars up to five-or six-figure sums, reflects the diversity of the medium and, especially, the balance between photography as document and photography as art. Collectors, whether private, corporate, or institutional, drive the market and approach acquisitions from very different intellectual and economic standpoints. Some are interested primarily in investment. Others are searching for visual records of specific social or historical events or particular people, while still others may be interested in the history of the medium itself. Categories that have become sought after, with prices to match, include family albums, early erotic images, Hollywood publicity stills, and railway and industrial photographs. There is also growing demand for photographs as works of art. The work of contemporary fine artists and art photographers (two increasingly overlapping categories) is obviously aimed at this market, and by 2000 individuals such as Philip-Lorca di Corcia, Andreas Gursky, Cindy Sherman, and Jeff Wall were all fetching very high prices. However, earlier work produced with a different primary purpose continues to be re-evaluated as ‘classic photography’ and assimilated into the art photography market.

Prices are based on a combination of factors, very similar to those that apply to other works of art: the reputation of the artist-photographer; the perceived importance of the particular image within his or her body of work, or within a wider historical or photographic context; rarity, provenance, and condition. Since the 1960s, the concept of the vintage print has played an increasingly central role. So many variables inevitably result in a wide variation in price even for works by the same photographer. The most predictable prices tend to be for contemporary works bought directly from a gallery. Prices can be set for the work of a contemporary photographer, and graded according to which number a print may be from an edition; the more prints are sold, the fewer remain available and so the price increases. The secondary market thrives in part on the ability of one person to buy from another and sell for a higher price. Opinions on commercial value vary according to personal experience, and prices can be more flexible.

Conclusion

The modern market is just old enough to show signs of the natural cycle of any art market. Auctioneers, dealers, and galleries have now sourced and sold material over a period of more than 30 years. Much of this material has been acquired by collectors and leaves the market, possibly forever in the case of major institutions. Important private or corporate collections may be donated or bequeathed to museums (e.g. Gruber, Levy) or may be sold (Anderson, Jammes), in which case the photographs re-enter the market and the cycle begins again. The most sought-after works by the most famous names inevitably become scarcer as examples disappear into collections and this, in turn, raises the prices of similar works still available. Gradually, buyers look elsewhere for less expensive purchases and lesser-known photographers are rediscovered. The relationship between curators, collectors, and dealers is complex. At best it brings attention to work that has languished or remained hidden and contributes to our knowledge and understanding of many of the less well-documented avenues of photographic history.

— Lindsey S. Stewart

Bibliography

• Blodgett, R., Photographs: A Collector's Guide (1979).
• Koetzle, M., Das Foto: Kunst- und Sammelobjekt (1997).
• Badger, G., Collecting Photography (2003)