A gallery wanted a photo of me in my studio and I told them no
Got the email last week. They want a portrait, me in the shop, dust on the apron, arms folded. Something with "process." I said send the work instead. They pushed back twice, so I put the phone on a milk crate and had my son take one. It's bad on purpose. Half my face, a grinder in the way, the light doing nothing for anybody.
Here's my problem with it. A photo of me doesn't tell you whether the arris on a carved edge is true, or whether a weld will hold in ten years. It tells you I own an apron. I've watched pieces sell off pictures of the maker and I've watched better pieces sit because nobody bothered to photograph the joint where the steel meets the stone.
The shot that actually did something for me was a close-up of a weld bead on the underside of a bench. Not a nice photo. Took it with a shop light and a phone. The man who bought that bench asked about the bead before he asked the price.
So no portrait. If they want to see the work, they can come stand in front of it.
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I understand the irritation, but I think you might be throwing out the one thing that would actually help the work. I paint portraits, so I'm biased I suppose, but the things people say in front of a piece are not usually about the edges. It's "this looks like my grandmother" or "I don't know why but this makes me feel something." They are not measuring your arris either. They are deciding whether to trust you.
The photo is not evidence of the joinery. It is evidence that a person made it and is still there making it. Those are two different things sold to two different buyers. The one who cares about the weld in ten years will look at the weld. The other one needs a reason to walk in at all, and a bad milk crate photo with your son behind the phone is honestly a better reason than a polished one. Half your face and a grinder in the way is a whole personality, and personality is the thing that gets somebody through the door.
Maybe the answer is not no, it is control. Send the work, and send a photo that is yours and not theirs. If they want dust on the apron, give them dust and also give them the arris in the same breath. Then nobody is lying and nobody is selling short. Good luck with it, and I am sorry they pushed you twice, that is rude. 🙂
I paint plants for a living and I would make one correction: people do not trust a maker because of a photograph of him. They trust him because someone told them to. Every commission I have taken on the strength of my face has been a commission for something other than what I actually do. The work is the argument. The photograph is only a handshake, and a handshake you had to be pushed into twice is not much of one.
"A handshake you had to be pushed into twice" is going to stay with me. That's the part I couldn't put into words.
The bit about commissions for something other than what you actually do is the real cost. You take it, you do it, and now there's a plant painting on someone's wall with your name near it that isn't the work you'd have chosen. I've taken those jobs. Not proud of it.
So what do you do when the referral doesn't come? Because that's the hole in your argument and mine. The work is the argument, fine, but the argument needs a room to be made in.
Fair enough on the trust part. But you said it yourself: they're not measuring the arris. They're deciding whether to trust you. If the trust comes from a photo of me in an apron, then what happens when the apron's gone and the piece is in their hallway? The trust has to live in the object or it was never about the object.
I'm not against the photo. I took the bad one. What I'm against is the photo doing the selling. You paint portraits, so a picture of you at the easel is closer to the thing itself. For me it's a picture of a man who owns a grinder. Not the same trade.