The Price of Your Work

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Photographer Andrew Moore featured in ArtNews

Any number of things might go through an artist’s mind in deciding what to charge for work. Give it away or charge a lot? Will a substantial price assert the significance of the work or drive buyers away?

Last week in New York I was reading ArtNews. On page 4 there is an advertisement for Heritage Auction Gallery showing an Annie Leibovitz 14″ x 14″ Cibachrome photographs of Robert Redford. The estimated price is $4,000 to $6.000. It’s number 4 of an edition of 50. The price seems about right for a not great photograph by Annie Leibovitz – and it is Robert Redford after all.

More interesting though is the article in the same issue about the photographer Andrew Moore who takes photographs mostly of urban scenes and collapsed buildings. His prints sell for between $7,000 and $25,000 at the Yancy Richardson Gallery, a terrific gallery in New York. Thats a nice price. An artist could live and breathe with those prices and even have an occasional meal out. Moore is a fine photographer and BAPC member work is as good or better.

New York itself lends a certain weight to work shown. Its in the air. I know that and it allows galleries to charge more. But, that said, we don’t charge enough for our work.

Internet Rip Offs

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The Internet world does not respect copy protection, to say the least. Images can be dragged off the page by anyone and posted elsewhere, typically uncredited. BAPC members are concerned about this issue as recent emails have shown, but most seem to think it’s still worthwhile to post their images to the net anyway.

Here is why:
1. The Internet is the greatest communication tool going and a great way to get an image out into the world.
2. A web image is typically a reduced version of the original. Printing from this image will result in an inferior print compared to the original and not even close to the artist’s intention.  Watermarking an image can further discourage printing.  Stock Photography houses like Getty Images do just fine posting vast numbers of images to the web, but they post small versions only.  If you want the larger version, you pay a fee.
3. Copying an image to another site or including it in another work of art, as annoying as that is, exposes the work to a greater audience. Worst case, the image is claimed by another artist as their own or is used without credit.

It’s still important to copyright and protect images particularly for print publication use.  Professional photographers depend on being paid for each use unless they have sold that right to someone else.  But the Internet seems to be a different kind of place.  At some point image software may contain an expiration code that disassembles an image after a certain date.  Until that happens anything you put on the web can wind up anywhere else.