Sunday, March 9

Bill Owens at Arnolfini, Bristol (ends 30 March)


If you're in the area, there's a Bill Owens exhibition entitled "Suburbia Revisited" at Arnolfini in Bristol. The show runs through his work from the well known and influential "Suburbia" book shot in California in the 1970s, to subsequent black and white studies of political protests, through to a small representation of his more recent colour pictures.

I paid an all-too-brief visit – the Suburbia prints are fascinating and well presented, although the later black and white work seemed to be printed a smidgen on the small side to be fully engaging.

As well as a new book to accompany the exhibition, the "Suburbia" book is still widely available (for example via the UK Amazon site).

About the venue
If you've never been to Arnolfini, it's a very pleasant exhibition space and cinema in the centre of Bristol. It also has a good bookshop (where I picked up the little £5 Banksy books before he hit the big time). And entrance is free.

Arnolfini was recently refurbished, which resulted in a vast improvement of the exhibition spaces but ruined, in my humble opinion, the all-important cafe bar! Arnolfini was established in 1961 by Jeremy and Annabel Rees, and Jeremy Rees' biography makes for more than interesting reading:

Jeremy Rees

In a nutshell
Exhibition runs until 30 March 2008.
Arnolfini is open seven days a week in March (NB. Arnolfini will be closed Mondays starting from April).
Entrance is free.
Galleries and box office are open 10am–6pm daily.
The bookshop is open 10am–8 pm daily.
Arnolfini is located on Narrow Quay, between the harbourside and Prince Street, about 15 minutes' walk from Bristol Temple Meads railway station.

http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/

Monday, March 3

March madness photographic print sale – better than Bekman?



As an experiment, and in the spirit of Jen Bekman's 20 × 200, I'm offering prints of these two photos throughout the month of March at a fraction of the usual price. Namely £12 each (instead of the usual £80) for 15 by 10 inch prints plus postage and packing at the normal rate (UK £5, Rest of Europe £7, Rest of World £10). The 15 by 10 inch prints are printed on lustre Fuji Crystal Archive photographic paper from a local pro lab that I use regularly.

The Punch and Judy photo has featured in my three solo shows and the egg and chips one is quite nice. What's the catch? Well, none apart from the fact that it will be 'print on demand' to keep the costs down, and so I'll get the prints made in two batches – at the middle and end of March, so expect to wait up to 3 weeks for delivery. The prints will not be offered at this price again, of course.

email me for full details, why don't you.

For normal print sales, details are here.

Sunday, March 2

Print prices – the two-tier solution


Pricing prints is a tricky business. The first time I had a print exhibited was about 5 years ago in a Royal Photographic Society (RPS) show. I had no idea how much to charge and asked several photographers who had exhibited, as well as the RPS themselves. The consensus seemed to be that £100 was the minimum price point for exhibited material. I think I priced my smallish print (above) at around £140, and I waited for the orders to roll in as the exhibition toured the country. Unfortunately, the response was disappointing... It was interesting to look at the exhibition price list where the prices ranged from around £40 (one of the Silver medal winners was one of the cheapest prints) to the mid-thousands.

As I started to get more queries about print prices via my web site, I was caught in two minds. Namely trying to make some money from the hundreds or thousands of hours of "work" that I'd spent making pictures versus the fact that many enquiries seemed to be from students or fellow photographers, with not a huge amount of cash to throw around. I didn't feel entirely comfortable selling things for prices that I, as a photography enthusiast, couldn't afford.

In the end (and incidentally this is before the estimable Jen Bekman started up http://www.20x200.com/), I slowly came to the conclusion that the ideal solution was to offer small prints for low prices while offering larger prints at prices that I couldn't afford, but possibly other people could...

In addition, as an experiment along the lines of 20×200, I'm offering prints of two photos at very low prices throughout March to see how many (any?) sell. Details to follow tomorrow.