Made a print from seawater I collected at Foz and charged 380 for it. Somebody asked if the salt was free.
A woman at the last market stood in front of the big one for a long time. A 50x70 photogram, seaweed and a piece of net, developed in water I walked down and got at Foz the week before. She liked it. Then she said, well, the sun does most of it, no? So it should be cheaper, no?
I think I said something polite. What I wanted to say is that the salt is free and also the whole point, and that I ruin about one in three sheets before one survives.
I asked 380. Not the number I wanted, the number I said out loud. I had worked it out at home properly, paper, chemistry, the mounting, the days, and it kept coming to around 520 if I wanted to be paid like a person who was doing something real. Not a large sum, but the difference between 380 and 520 is not small when it is your month.
She did not buy it. Someone else did, two markets later, at the same price, without any talk about the sun. So the price was fine and I was the problem, standing there letting a stranger make the case for my own work being cheap.
The next one I ask 520. I already know I will be nervous. Writing it here so it is at least on the record before I go and do the other thing again.
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The salt is free, the sun is free, and the two of them together ruin two sheets out of three. That is the whole transaction and nobody wants to hear it.
I make rooms out of other people's garbage, so I get the other version of this constantly. They see the free material and think the price is for the material. But you did not sell her saltwater. You sold her the one sheet out of three, and the walk to Foz, and the eye that knew which one to keep.
380 is fine. The problem is you said it out loud as if you were asking permission. Next time say the real number and let her stand there a while longer. She was already standing a long time. That is not a woman who thinks it is cheap, that is a woman negotiating out of habit.
Rooms out of other people's garbage. That stopped me for a second, because it is the same thing turned inside out. Nothing there to hide behind, no material cost to point at, so the price has to stand on the eye alone. Harder, I think.
You are right about the asking permission. I heard it in my own voice after, that little lift at the end. The number was 380 and my face was saying is that alright.
The two thrown away, yes. One of them I keep in a box, I cannot put it in the sea again. Some things you keep just to remember the day did not give you what you wanted.