Fine art photography collections

What makes fine art photography popular

I have spent a long time now selling my own work, and the work of the artists we represent, and of the photographic artists I have been privileged to mentor over the years. I stand in the gallery most days and watch people come in and go out. And what people will actually hang on their walls still surprises me.

I am getting a better feel for it. What I have stopped believing is that anyone can predict it.

Create from the heart, or create what sells

Every exhibition brings the same question. An artist who exhibits has to keep an audience, and an audience wants to see something new. So I stand in the studio and ask myself the old question: do I make what I feel, or what I think people will buy?

Underneath it sits a more important one. Why do people follow your work in the first place? In fine art photography your audience is your number one asset, and people buy from people. The picture matters, but so does the person who made it.

And no two people are alike. What one person hates, the next person will love. You cannot please everybody all the time, so quite often the best thing you can do is walk into the studio and make it from the heart.

The work that never comes off the wall

Some pieces are, I think, timeless. They hit the mark nearly every time somebody walks in.

Salt of the Earth is one of them. I sketched the portrait, made a black powder transfer from it, then laid ordinary dishwashing salt over the top and worked it with a brush, so the thickness of the salt decided where the highlights and the shadows fell. Then I photographed it and printed it on fine art paper. The material itself speaks to the title.

People invest in it for the legacy of Nelson Mandela, because they follow the work, and because of how it was made. I cannot be without that portrait in the gallery, even on the days I am tired of looking at it. Watch it being made.

The African Queen collection is another. It is hard to put your finger on why, but I could probably run the gallery for a year on African Queen alone.

Calendar work and emotive work

There is a real difference between the two. Classic Cape Town has nothing particularly emotive about it. They are good pictures, but they are not emotive pictures. And yet people visiting Cape Town find a strong connection to them, because what they are really buying is a memory: to keep one, or to bring one back, to remind themselves where they stood and how it felt.

Then there is scarcity. Some visitors do not mind whether a piece is a limited edition or a signed open edition Portfolio print. They connect with the picture and that is enough. Others love knowing they own one of a small number. For them it is like collecting anything else, and when they unroll the print there is a certificate to put away, knowing that one day it may be worth a great deal.

The one that surprised me most

Analogous Anthology No.1 is built from photographs of fishing boats: the hulls and the gunwales, their textures, colours and shapes. I assembled them into something that looks like a Dutch harbour at the last light of the day, boats moving in and out of a small inlet, towers on the skyline. While I was building it I had no real idea what it was going to become.

My wife walked into the studio. She does not like abstract work, and I say that kindly. She looked at it once and said, "That will sell."

She was right. It is one of the top three selling prints in the history of the gallery, almost twenty years now.

That is why I love what I do. You cannot box it and you cannot pigeonhole it. It comes down to a feeling, to memory, to emotion, and to people who love to buy from people.