Making It Happen

Recently I had to submit a CV / bio for a photobook website and I chose not to provide the traditional chronological list of education, exhibitions, and awards.  My photography CV is filled with local shows and oddities and it has lapses and gaps for years when I was disconnected from exhibition possibilities but still producing work, and it makes me look totally minor league. 

In place of a CV I wrote:

Back Story Bio:  Who is Hans Hickerson and why have I never heard of him?

The short answer is that it is easy to fly under the recognition radar indefinitely if you are an artist / photographer working mostly outside the gallery / academic art world and if you have been more interested in your creative work than in tedious self-promotion – and also if life has led you on a winding path through many rewarding and scenic but unrelated personal and professional experiences, including living abroad, parenting, and a career teaching languages.

Like musicians, most photographers I know have day jobs and few are lucky enough to turn their art into a paid career.  For many photographers and artists, workshops, commercial work, and teaching as well as non-art-related jobs such as construction seem to be common ways of paying the bills.  Spouses with good jobs are another solution, and a lucky few can count on inherited family money.

Because it is hard to make a living doing art, art careers tend to be short.  Many intrepid photographers I know have worked for only a decade or so before calling it quits.  The marginal, hand-to-mouth existence begins to wear thin and the pressure mounts to find a gig that offers a chance at relationship stability, real estate, children, and perhaps even a car that starts.

There are of course a few exceptions, exceptions that prove the rule.  When I met him in the mid-1980s, Lewis Baltz seemed to be doing well enough, and he explained to me that the turning point was when as an artist you were seen as being collectible.  Baltz was talented, but he was also lucky to be in the right place at the right time, just as photography was coming into its own as an art world medium and before money for grants and books had dried up.  He did an MFA in photography before it was common and was in California when it had begun to come into its own as an art scene.

Another exception is photographer Robert Adams.  He did not have the burden of children and was supported by his wife for years, freeing him to devote himself to his books until prestigious awards and print sales took over and provided income.  He was also lucky to have had support at the beginning of his career from John Szarkowski, curator of photography at MOMA in New York and arguably the most influential player of the time.

In my own case, I had some three decades b.c. (before children) to make my work a priority, although even then it happened mostly evenings and weekends, on vacations, and between jobs.  Although I began doing photographic work in book format, albeit without much prospect of publication, in my second decade using the medium I moved into collage work. 

My larger format collages are best viewed in person, and do not reproduce well, and gallery showings have limited impact in space and time.   For more than a decade I would work for a year or two and show the work.  But shows generated no sales, no press, and were not seen or noticed by the local museum curator even though I had done publicity.  Then the shows came down and it was as if nothing had happened. 

So why keep going?  Good question, and I suppose the answer is that I kept going because I was convinced that the work itself was successful and that there was always hope for wider recognition.  Plus I love making art, an endeavor that involves the head and the hand as well as the heart.  I certainly did not continue because I was covering my expenses and making money.

In fact, since many (most?) works of art are not sold, it is a wonder that any art is made at all.  Given the investment of their blood, sweat, and tears, artists subsidize the public viewing / consumption of their work through the sacrifice of their present and future material comfort and earnings.  And when they do sell something, the time they invest often ends up being paid like prison labor.

There are of course established, high-profile artists who make a living through sales of their work.  But is their work really qualitatively superior?  And if qualitatively superior, does it justify low valuations for work from other artists who are simply less established, well-known, or lucky?  Probably not, but given our market-driven economics that is the lay of the land.  Talent is good, but status is everything.