dmcphoto Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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Before photography people were drawing and painting the scenes they liked. People still draw and paint, and galleries sell their work for quite a bit of money.
I know one person who uses an enormous view camera to directly make large (20x24 inch if I'm not mistaken) images on sheets of Polaroid film. They sell, and they are not cheap.
Platinum and palladium printing, like traditional silver gelatin printing, is not yet dead by any means. It's just not "mainstream". In fact such prints typically fetch far more than comparable Epson 9900 prints. But, some now make the negatives for these on inkjet printers.
Prints are *objects* crafted by an artist to look a particular way way based not just on the image but on the choice of physical media. Paper color, texture, and finish make a tremendous difference in the look of any given image, not to mention that quite a number of people print on other media like canvas, aluminum, and wood to name a few. When you buy a print you have a physical thing that was crafted by someone, not just virtual representation.
That brings us to price. Art lovers will not pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for a file they have to display on their televisions. I have never seen a gallery selling such files. The only market for them is corporate, mostly for use in printed matter. That's a great market, but it is very different than the market for wall art.
Last but not least is the effect of supply and demand. When an image is electronic it is only a matter of time before it gets out into the world (as on the Internet) and anyone who wants it can have it for free. The completely unlimited supply drops the value of the image to zero. No one will pay much something that can instantaneously become worthless. Even "unlimited" edition prints are finite in number and therefore have more monetary value.
I don't think there is anything wrong with displaying images electronically, but I think electronic image display and physical prints are so completely different that they have no real effect on one another. I also think we'll continue to see galleries offering drawings, paintings, various types of photographic prints, woodcuts, linocuts, etchings, engravings, lithographs and other types of prints for many generations to come.
All IMO...
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