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The photographers who featured at the Christie’s sale include Anita Dube, Vivan Sundaram, Ravi Agarwal and Rameshwar Broota, merely a whisper of the many photographic talents from India beginning to make waves in the art buyer community.
Clearly, the message is that photography as an art investment is coming of age. While prices commanded by photographers in Indian art sales may not have reached similar levels yet, Christie’s and Sotheby’s have always been bellwethers of the art community and global trends. Interestingly, while a vintage print of Ansel Adams’ famous Moonrise photograph sold for $1200 (Rs 52,000)
in 1975, by 2005, the price
had risen to $25,000 (Rs 10 lakh approx), and may well sell for $100,000 (around Rs 40 lakh) today.
American and European art collectors have accepted photography as a medium that stands tall, next to painting and sculpture over the last decade or so, photographs accounting for as much as 7 per cent of art auction sales in 2007. One of the key reasons for an increasing uptake of art photography is the pricing of individual works, typically between a tenth and a hundredth of the cost of a painting of similar merit. Value appreciation of photographs too spans a wide range, from nil over a three-year valuation window, to ten-fold or more for the same period — again similar to the more traditional painting and sculpture forms.
One investment parallel that can be drawn is to the world of stock markets, with stocks of high trading price engaging smaller numbers of investors, thus resulting in higher volatility and risk, compared with penny stocks inviting larger investor volume
due to a lower threshold of entry, and consequently, ensuring lower volatility hence safer investment. Photography is evidently the penny stock
segment of the art investment market.
As an indicator of trends closer home, gallery exhibitions of contemporary photography in Mumbai in early 2007 boasted typical prices from Rs 5,000 to Rs 50,000 per 2’x3’ print, for limited editions (usually of 10 to 20 prints per image), and sold, perhaps, two to five images in a week-long exhibition. In comparison, by mid 2008, the galleries are seeing prices from Rs 10,000 to Rs 2 lakh each, yet seeing sales of 10 to 20 images over a week.
A patron who entered this investment area in early 2007 mentions that he has seen some of the images he bought back then, appreciating to
over thrice their value in just 18 months.
So what photographic images work in a gallery exhibition or auction? Foremost, of course, is the perceived value of the artist. Even mundane works by a celebrated photographer will command high prices. Beyond that point, images, which are compositionally akin to traditional paintings, appear to work the best. Also, moody photographs that evoke contemplation, awe, sorrow and introspection sell at better prices than cheerful and joyous photos, calendar type images, flowers and landscapes — unless the artist is Ansel Adams himself!
Pure abstract photographs do not necessarily sell well, because the uniqueness of the photographic medium, the ability to capture detail and provide context, get lost in the result, thus bringing the photograph up against abstract paintings in valuation, rarely to its advantage.
Unusual subjects (such as a rusty old door, shorn of all contexts), unusual views of familiar subjects (such as a highly perspective-distorted wide-angled photo of a familiar landmark), and unusual treatments (such as day-bright or colour-enhanced images of subjects shot at night) evoke a strong investor or art collector response. On the other hand, the casual visitor or first-time buyer usually reacts best to the familiar and the aesthetically pleasing, passing over the moody and the disturbing.
From recent experience, the art photography market is divided into two, or perhaps three, segments:
n The mature investor, who evaluates the brand-value of the artist as much as the long-term visual and value impact of a prospective purchase — often seeing the current undervaluation of photography as an art investment opportunity in comparison to the traditional arts value bubble. The abstract, semi-abstract, the minimalist and the very moody images sell best to this spectator.
n The newcomer to art buying, for whom the lower entry threshold of photography purchase allows a lower risk entry into art speculation than other arts. Typically, this buyer would be more sensitive to whether the prospective art work would retain visual and discussion value over the years, while hanging on the drawing room wall, or whether it would pall rapidly like calendar photographs do. The semi-abstract, the unusual, and the detail-rich photographs sell best to the newcomer.
n The impulse buyer, who walks into a gallery or exhibition, gets extremely enamoured by a particular image, and makes a purchase, often without regard to the pricing altogether. The colourful and the minimalistic photos are the images for this segment. Interestingly, the seasoned art critic or art aficionado also almost invariably prefers the same type of images, and
buys in the same way, from the heart rather than from
the mind.
Before ending, some observations from a recent exhibition at the Centre for Promotion of Photography as an Art Form, Piramal Gallery, in Mumbai: Gallery staff members were surprised at what they felt were much higher prices at the exhibition compared with the many prior photography exhibitions held at that venue. The denouement came at the end of the exhibition, when the same staff members admitted to being astounded at the number of high-value sales, which happened at the exhibition — ergo, the art photography market has taken a leap, now is the time to get on board.
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