A lens on photography as art

Podcast transcript: scroll to the areas that interest you

• TF: Tristanne Farrell, Investec Wealth and Investment International, Senior Investment manager
• VM: Virginia MacKenny, artist, writer, Emeritus Associate Professor of Painting at Michaelis School of Fine Art
• VC: Vanessa Cowling, an artist based in Cape Town and part-time lecturer in photography at UCT

   

• 00:00: Intro

  VM: I was talking to Persons Project, which is a Helsinki photography school, and they were saying that one of the useful things about buying photographs is that it's a way for young contemporary collectors to start, because generally photographs are cheaper than paintings or sculptures or whatever.

  In their opinion, the increase in value of contemporary photographs had gone up ten times in the last five years.

  TF: Welcome to Art in Focus, an Investec Focus Radio Series that explores the dynamic and growing African art market. I'm Tristanne Farrell, your podcast host. I'm a senior wealth manager at Investec with a passion for art that's out of control. In this podcast, I'll be chatting with art collectors, investors, renowned artists and emerging talents about the current state of the African art scene.

  Whether you're an art novice or a seasoned investor, join me as we tour the landscape of Africa's artistic expression together. In this episode, we'll be unpacking the photography market, the trends, the fears, and how we discuss one's view of photography as an investment or just to add to your collection.

• 01:09: Introduction of guests

  TF: So, let's meet our guests. Virginia McKinney is a South African artist, writer, Emeritus Associate Professor of Painting at Michaelis School of Fine Art.

  Michaelis is a tertiary art school in the Cape Town suburb of Gardens, founded in 1925 and is the Fine Arts Department of UCT in Cape Town. Vanessa Cowling is an artist based in Cape Town and part time lecturer in photography at UCT.

  Her personal medium work is sustainable photography practices focused on the environment. So welcome to you both. And thank you for joining me.

  VM: Thank you.

  VC: Thank you.

• 01:42: Berni Searle and her significance

  TF: Should we start off on the Berni Searle question? Can you explain to us who Berni Searle is as a person? Because you obviously know her quite well from working with her, and then one artist commented to me once that she led the way of contemporary photography. And I just wanted to hear your views on this and what your insight is around this. So maybe start with Virginia.

  VM:  We've both worked with Berni, and she's known for her sculpture. She's taught sculpture, video, practice, and all sorts of things. But Berni uses photography to supplement, or at least present, her work. But the photograph becomes the artwork in the end.

  VC:  Virginia's hit it spot on. I think that’s how artists use photography and don't have to be seen as photographers as such. I think that's interesting. So, the photographic works, how they speak back to the sculptures, how photography, how other people are brought in to help with the technical side of making the photographs is interesting, but the photographs as the artwork itself. Yeah, interesting, but it's not a pure photographic body of art.

  VC: There's a book that came out last year called Photography as Collaboration, and basically acknowledges that to produce photographs, it's a collaborative effort, even if it's a question of the photographer and the person sitting in front of the camera. That's a collaboration.

  VM:  And very often artists don't have all the skills available to them to manage to get the result they want personally. So, and you find that with people in foundries making other people making sculptures for them. So, really it's the idea, but the technical rendering of that idea. Someone else comes in to help with that.

   

• 03:21: Prof Muholi's work powerfully archives black LGBTQIA stories

  TF: Interesting. So, can we talk a little about Prof Muholi? So, what's your view on their strong portraiture works? For listeners who don't know the work, it's of an activist nature, and they tell stories of the black LGBTQIA, which hadn't been done before. They pioneered this. What are your views?

  VC: I think it's really lovely. Once you know an artist to see the kind of journey from where they begin to where they are now. It's a very interesting narrative. So, the earlier work where they were photographing people within the community and really creating an archive for people who had no archive. They didn't have pictures. They weren't the subject of your traditional kind of portraiture that was happening at the time and Zanele Mohole really took that on and made this archive of work that never existed before, and I think that was really powerful.

  And then it's interesting to see how the work changed and what happened as the status grew and they had to travel all around the world. The only subject they had that was accessible was themselves, and so that turning into the self-portrait and looking at themselves instead of at others, I think it gives even the earlier work more resonance. It makes it even more interesting. Stronger, in my opinion, because it's not looking at others. It's others and myself included.

  So, there's self-portraits that are made in hotel rooms all over the world with things that are just accessible and lying around and how that is then transformed into these really iconic, really powerful lionesses and these kinds of animals, I think, speaks back to that, those earlier works and obviously the scale, everything went much bigger with those.

  TF: Went sculpture, painting, larger photographic works.

  VM: Yeah, it's become quite monumental. In the Venice Biennale, the images were huge, and they dominated certain spaces. Again, you've got to look at photography's range of practices. Is it documentary? Is it performative? And in the case of their work, it's an activism.

• 05:32: Muholi's mentorship programme empowers aspiring photographers

  TF: So Zanele's also set up a mentorship programme in Roeland Street, giving young aspiring photographers equipment guidance to start their career in this space. How do you feel about this sort of project that shows artists giving back? Are there other projects like this that you're aware of?

  VM: I think it's a long tradition. I think it's great what she's doing. But the Newtown Market Photography Workshop, that was set up by David Goldblatt, I think in 1989, and was a very powerful impetus, particularly for young black photographers and artists have quite a high sense of social responsibility if they're not simply being superstars when they get to the top. And so often set up systems where they help educate, provide spaces for other artists.

  VC: And I also think Zanele Muholi is a product of Market Photo Workshop that David Goldblatt began. So in a sense, there is that connection between them and it's almost like a paying forward, paying back kind of continuation, which I think is wonderful. I also taught one of Zanele Muholi's people that she sponsored later on, and it definitely makes a huge difference in terms of their exposure, getting that person's name and the work that they're making out there. So, to have a big name supporting you, I think makes a huge difference.

• 06:53: Photography collecting requires understanding edition sizes and quality

  TF: Can we move on to photography as an investable medium? I know artists don't generally like talking about art as an investment, but for somebody who's a collector, I'm interested in how art photography specifically holds its value when an artist dies.

  For example, David Goldblatt passed on. Goodman Gallery will keep the negatives, but print his work still. How does it work in simple terms for somebody collecting?

  VM: Collecting photography, funnily enough, is quite complicated.

  TF: I'm glad you said it.

  VM: Partly because the public don't really know the complexities of producing the work. And there are things you have to get to know. So first and foremost, you've got to like what you're buying. That's the standard response of most gallerists, which I think is ethical. If somebody's buying something, you've got to like it because you're going to have to live with it.

  If you buy something because it's an investment, you may be disappointed, you may get angry, but if you bought it because you love it, it's going to sustain you on that level. And I was asking some of the gallerists in Paris Photo how sales were going, things like that. Every gallerist said, ‘buy what you like’.

  The other things you’ve got to consider are how many of these photographs are being made. I think it's an area where the public are quite suspicious. If it's a painting, they know there's a one-off unique item. If it's a photograph, they don't know how to quantify.

  TF: Should have an edition size, right?

  VM: There are edition sizes. So, it's one of the questions you ask if you're a buyer. How many in this edition? And sometimes the editions are small, three, but sometimes they're huge and then you've got to ask what they're printed on. What kind of paper?

  In fact, I should probably defer to Vanessa here because she's the person who knows far more about that side of producing photographs, and so there are a lot of questions you've got to ask about scale, numbers, type of paper. Is it archival? Isn't it? I don't know. You don't want to chip in here?

  VC: Well, absolutely. Well, firstly, the value of an artwork or a photograph will be determined by the edition, but also whether, for example, if David Goldblatt printed his own photograph, it would be deemed more valuable. So, the artist's hand in producing that would be a far more valuable object than anything produced afterwards.

  Of course, they would never be able to produce anything after if the edition had been closed. And that is something as a photographer or any kind of printmaker that you would have to be very careful of. Because if you get that wrong, the trust in you as a practitioner, that would be lost. If people are printing editions post the person's death, it may only be for non-sale, so for exhibition purposes, so you make things like exhibition prints, but the value of that would never be as great as...

• 09:35: How artists sign and authenticate their photographs

  TF: And how do they sign those works? Originally if the artist is alive, they sign the work.

  VC: Exactly, which is why it's more vague.

  VM: There's an edition stamp that is normally authenticated by the gallery. So, you look for those two, and then the dating is important. In Paris Photo, I was very interested how they label the photographs now, because what they do is they're going to say, for instance, I saw Man Ray produced in 1920 something. It was reprinted in 1960.

  TF: Yes.

  VM: And then you ask who did the printing and how was it done and the label, most of that information is there. Paris Photo is very sophisticated, it knows how to present work. Sometimes in South Africa, you don't get that information. But then the buyer needs to educate themselves a little bit and ask those questions. And there may be, that's an area where I think it's quite tricky.

  VC: A lot of photographers in South Africa would give a certificate of authenticity that goes together with the work, especially if the work is not signed on the front. So, very often photographers, or any kind of art practitioner, they don't sign the front of the work anymore because they think it interferes, becomes a different fashion and they sign the back of the work. And then you would get a certificate of authenticity along with that.

  TF: These are important notes for the listeners because if you’re first time out collecting photography, you need to know to look at the paper, the printing quality.

  VC: Importantly, there's a huge difference between what's called a silver print and then a pigment print. The silver prints are what was available to photographers historically, and this is made onto paper with silver halides and silver metal. It's archival.

  It's made in a darkroom. It's the materiality of it is very different to, for example, something that's made through an inkjet printer, where pigments are applied to the surface.

  It's more valuable to own a silver print because it takes more time. The archival life of that is very well known and documented. But it's been handmade and there's something about the hand being involved and especially the hand of the artist that gives the work more value.

  VM: The point there to add on to that is that the older photographers, the older prints are more expensive. So, I was talking to Persons Project, which is a Helsinki photography school, and they were saying that one of the useful things about buying photographs is that it's a way for young contemporary collectors to start.

  Because generally photographs are cheaper than paintings or sculptures or whatever. And that in their opinion, the increase in value of contemporary photographs had gone up dramatically - 10 times in the last five years. They were very excited about what they were managing to sell on Paris Photo.

  Funnily, I got the reverse from Stevenson, who I also spoke to on Paris Photo, who said they thought the market had dropped. My assessment there might be that the wave of buying African photography had, maybe...

  TF: Subsided slightly.

  VM: Yes. So, there's things there, but the Persons Project said that contemporary technology had improved massively in that time. The prints are more archivally, they last longer, and so there's a great improvement there. So, the younger photographers are now taking better purchase in the market and are, if you want, more investment-worthy because the work will last.

  TF: And they're more affordable, I suppose.

  VM: And they're more affordable.

  TF: As a starting point.

  VM: Correct. And it's a good way to start a collection.

   

• 13:29: Which up-and-coming photographers should we watch?

  TF: Let's move on to the young and up-and-coming photographers in the market. So, I recently purchased a Lexi Hyde from Everard Read and I see others like Lindo Sobekwa with Goodman Gallery, Mareli Lal with SMAC. Do you see any other, any other up-and-coming talents through the galleries or Michaelis that stand out for both of you? And maybe Vanessa, you start.

  VC: So, for me, I see young photographers more through Michaelis than in the gallery. I think it's difficult, particularly in South Africa for photography to be shown in gallery spaces. And I think what that results in is that you don't see as much as there actually is.

  It's a very small percentage that makes it into these galleries, but it's an incredibly rich space. And in the more informal selling markets, I've definitely noticed young photographers selling more work, and I wouldn't even put actually Nobukho Nqaba as I think she's probably more established really as a young photographer already. But people like that, Thandi Msebenzi, Nicole Fraser.

  I would even put Jean Brundrit and Svea Josephy in that because they are practicing artists but they're not showing in these traditional gallery spaces, but people I think, are taking notice of that work and I'm hoping that it's a space that is growing.

  TF: But sticking with that theme, so there's more established photographers in the market. There's Zanele Muholi, David Goldblatt, Ashley Walters, Andrew Tshabangu, Ernest Cole, Legae Sehlako, Mikhael Subotzky, so all really well known South African photographers, Pieter Hugo, also well known for the hyenas series, and now the new shows around his family, and he had a beautiful photo of his son that was incredible. So, any of these artists, are they still worth adding to your collection?

  VM: Oh my gosh, yes. I mean, every name you've mentioned there has purchase in the world, and they're in, they've had monographs printed on them, and they've got an established space in...

  VC: Internationally.

  VM: Internationally. Most of the names you've mentioned have, are internationally established, yes.

  TF: Have I missed any, Vanessa?

  VC: I'm a huge fan of Jabulani Dhlamini, who's at Goodman as well, and he's a wonderful mentor. You talk about giving back, so I would include him in that.

  TF: Ashley Walters work, I know you love a lot.

  VC: I'm a huge fan of Ashley Walters, and he's just, he's the kind of photographer who has an incredible work ethic, but the way that he engages his subject matter and the spaces that he and ‘infiltrates’ is the wrong word, but he gently navigates into spaces that are incredibly dangerous.

  But he does it with this kind of gentleness and this kind of humanity, and I think you can see the difference in those results in the work that he produces. There's a gentleness and an empathy and a humanity to the work that he makes.

  VM: I think Ashley is also an inventive photographer. He uses photography to explore different ways of seeing the world and I think Ashley introduces us to the subject in a more oblique way, which makes the images more interesting, and I think that's again another reason why the public are a bit suspicious of photographers sometimes is that because, oh, we're subsumed by a flood of photographic images now.

  We all carry cell phones. And so, people think it's easy and actually really good photographs take time and take the eye and the development of the human being who's taking the photographs.

• 17:01: How do international photographers influence African markets?

  TF: Then just moving on to international photography, there's artists on the international scene like Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman. Is there any relation or inspiration to African markets from these international artists or not?

  VC: It's interesting that a lot of our information and things that we know about, for example, photography comes from the West or from the global North. But I think it's important to look closer at what has been happening in Africa prior even to Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin and for example, Seydou Keïta. West Africa has a huge history, very rich history of studio photography, not dissimilar to what Cindy Sherman is doing or has been doing.

  People like, Samuel Fosso. He used to work in a photographic studio and there was always a little bit of film left in the role. In order to just finish off the role, he would dress up in all these different characters and stances. He's become really quite famous for them taking on these different personas and personalities. Sometimes men, sometimes women, but all these different kinds of archetypes, which is what Cindy Sherman was doing in those early film series as well.

  So, there are lots of very beautiful and interesting African photography stories that are happening simultaneously, and that's where I would encourage people to start investigating and looking deeper.

• 18:19: The evolution of photography and the use of AI

  TF: The big question, I think you've touched on it already, Virginia, is photography as a medium, is it more accessible or relatable to collectors, or do you think people find it hard to understand to enable them to collect it?

  VM: In terms of accessibility, I think, I suppose people are used to looking at photographs and then they think they know what they're looking at. I don't know whether it's more accessible. What I think is interesting about the photographic world is the range of iterations that it had again, sorry to keep going back to Paris Photo, but it's where I've just come from.

  The range of manipulated photographs was extraordinary: people cutting them up, collaging them, sticking them elsewhere, working with photographic processes, bending what photography can do.

  So, the idea that photography represents what's out there has, I think it's just no longer a valid premise. You see what the person who's holding the camera or at least working with the photographic medium is doing.

  Sometimes it's used to present a performative identity, which is what Vanessa's just been talking about, which I think it's used a lot in the Southern African context, people representing their history through their own bodies and then a photograph taken of that, but there's a lot of play within the field as well.

  So, I went to Paris Photo to see what people were doing with photography as a medium. And where they're playing with it and what they're making, and funny enough, there's a lot of unique photography in that way, and when I say unique, I mean one-offs because it can only be presented once.

  TF: Not so traditional anymore.

  VM: Not traditional, but they were showing work from the seventies. For the last 50 years, in fact, probably longer - artists have been messing around with photographs and the photographic processes and doing really interesting things.

  VC: I also think photography is enormously complex and multi-layered. There are so many different things that people are doing and working with and if you really come down to the essentialness of photography, it's making work with light as the primary medium, as the ‘paint’. That is what photography is and so there are people making cameraless photographs like myself.

  There are people going back to analogue, very early analogue processes and where the materiality and the material of photography is the most important. There are people constructing, or artists, constructing very complex scenes. It's like a huge film production in order to make a still photograph.

  TF: So, it could be misunderstood then as a practice.

  VC: Totally.

  VM: Well, I think maybe just not understood as opposed to misunderstood. I mean, one of the things that you just said now, sorry, but you know, on light, I think with the introduction of AI and digital stuff, we've got a whole new field that's opening up and the notion of is it actually produced with light, though it may end up in a printed form.

  TF: Yeah.

  VM: That might make the public really suspicious, or it might make them really interested. I saw some astonishingly beautiful digitally produced photographs that had come through conversation between the artist and AI. We know the kind of standard is the quality of the prompt produces the quality of the work, and the quality of the response to what the prompt produces. So, we're in a whole imaginative field that is opening up and artists are playing with it as they've always done. They play with the tools that become available.

  VC: I wonder, I question, sorry Virginia, I question whether that is actually photography.

  VM: Well, it's certainly on Paris Photo.

• 21:42: Significance of the Paris Photo fair

  TF: And just on Paris Photo, we need to actually clarify for our listeners what it is. It's one of the biggest photographic fairs held in Paris annually. It's one of the largest in the world, I think.

  VM: Yeah, it is the largest in the world.

  TF: And it shows historical and contemporary, which is quite interesting.

  VM: And I suppose for people who think with an investor's eye only, but I really don't, I don't really appreciate it when people look only with an investor's eye, because then I think that they're denying what is being made and how it's being and how the world is thought about.

  But I just checked some of the figures for Paris Photo sales; well, some of the archival photographs, the older ones from the late 1800s and maybe the early 20th century. One-offs are selling for something like $425,000. That's a lot of money.

  VC: Well, somebody, I think the interesting thing with photography, and it speaks directly back to that. If you were, take any icon, and the earliest one before photography, so Jesus, there was somebody, you know, said something about, would you rather have a painting of Jesus or a photograph? And this is where photography, I think, holds its value because it's always evidential of the subject having been present.

  VM: I think that's old photography.

  VC: Yes. But you're talking about the archival, which ones are selling and that's where those are now holding their value.

  VM: The photography is indexical. It points to the original subject being in front and that's your story about light. And so, yes, the Jesus example is quite an interesting one.

• 23:12: Themes that are emerging in contemporary photographic art

  TF: Vanessa, just quickly, in your practice personally, can you take us through your photographic practice and maybe just a small, a few words on your recent show in France?

  VC: Yes. I've always been a photographic artist. It's my medium of choice for many reasons, but I went back later in life to do my master's - so only when I turned 47 did I go back to Michaelis and I did my master's there under the supervision of Svea Josephy and Penny Siopis.

  And so I think the best way to start is to kind of look at the practice in its entirety. I planted a sustainable photographic garden and that garden - it's really the kind of root of my current work. It's a teaching space as well.

  So not only is it a research space where I can explore and work with plants directly and specifically work with plants in order to make nontoxic photographic chemistry, but it's a place where I can pass that information on to students, and so that kind of roots my current work. I made a body of work called 'Fixing the Shadows, a Photographic Exploration of Beginnings and Endings’, which was my master's work.

  TF: I think also the environmental theme is quite a hot topic at the moment, be it investments in art world, sustainability, that sort of thing and just moving on to themes in general and South African photography, just as an example, David Goldblatt and Ernest Cole, they were focused on political themes initially.

  What new direction and themes are artists taking? Maybe this environmental path is quite prominent in artworks, I don't know what other themes you're seeing coming through?

  VM: I think the environmental concerns are growing amongst artist practice. I think it used to be a small niche area. Now it's across the board. People are concerned. We are in a world which is in trouble. We're creating the trouble and we're trying to find artists that are trying to find ways to communicate the trouble.

  Because scientists have failed to. So often there are conversations between scientists and artists. And the scientists are saying, please go out and do something that people can understand. Because we've got the facts and figures that people are just getting like rabbits in headlights and they're just avoiding it because they can't cope and so there are other ways of making art that allows people to recognise that to participate in the health of our world is to participate in our own health and our own survival.

• 25:43: Mixed media- painting on photos

  TF: Vanessa, do you have any themes you've seen coming through Michaelis?

  VC: So, since the garden, it's interesting. So, we planted the garden in 2021, and I teach a project called Earth Politics, specifically to encourage photographic young artists to speak to all of these things Virginia's talking about. But prior to that, you, people are in South Africa, it's all-around identity and identity politics and gender politics.

  And that's huge within the South African photographic scene inspired by people like Zanele Muholi. But then you have people like Tony Gum at the Black Archive, so look at looking at Santu Mofokeng and that work. So, everything and I think the reason for that is that after 1994, photographers before they had a purpose and the purpose was to share that information with the outside world.

  So, I think you see documentary photography kind of in South Africa is at the foreground, that is really what people are working with, and post '94, when we, this new democracy, it's what else is there now to photograph?

  TF: And I think, and I think...

  VC: There's this turning inward.

  TF: Themes of the manipulation of the work, like you were speaking about earlier, painting on the works, those sorts of things, or mixing the medias together is also coming through quite a lot. So, I think we can see this big transition coming down.

  VC: There's definitely, I think a move into that kind of material. So even if you look at Sitaara Stodel, she's a photographic artist, but she collages and she's collaged since her fourth year in Michaelis, but it's still photographic work. So, I think this idea of the material object is the photograph as object.

  VM: Yeah. And the artist I wanted was Santu Mofokeng. He's done just slightly aside to the materiality. There's this body of work focusing on the uranium mines and then there's a series of works on the pollution, the radioactive pollution of rivers in around Johannesburg and very rich and insightful work.

   

• 27:42: Closing and where to subscribe to listen to the series

  Thanks for listening to this episode of Art in Focus brought to you by Investec Focus Radio. You can find all our episodes on the series at investec.com/artinfocus or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate it, leave a comment and forward it to your friends and colleagues.

  Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the contributors at the time of publication and do not necessarily represent the views of the firm and should not be taken as advice or recommendations. Investec Bank Limited an authorized financial services provider and registered credit provider.