Marketing to artists, are we easy targets?

Are we, artists and photographers, easy to sell to? I often believe we are easy for others to make money from. We buy chances to get published, offer free use of our photographs and art, and pay fees to get an opportunity to “win”.

I’ve allowed “magazines” the privilege of using my photographs for free when the publisher made money from subscriptions just to say I was published but was I really published or was it the ability to use a free photograph the real selling point? Are we, photographers and artists so caught up in our own ego that we will pay to play?

It often appears to me that everyone is willing to sell to us and we are willing to pay. Vanity contests, vanity magazines, vanity books, and vanity exhibitions.

Marcel DuChamp in 1917 submitted “The Fountain” for exhibition in the Society of Independent Artists’ show at The Grand Central Palace in New York. It is said that the submission under the name “R. Mutt” was a protest because the society decided that anyone could be displayed simply by submitting a piece and paying a fee. Have we devolved what is art to anything is art and worthy of exhibition to simply “paying a fee”?