The price of fine art photos

Over the weekend I had the chance to visit the photosf exhibit. Basically it was a bunch of galleries featuring photographers, some very very famous, some unknown.

I was shocked at the prices for photos. I saw many over $20,000. Keep in mind, these aren't "one of a kind". They are photos that can and will be reproduced. Some were signed by the artist, some were not.

There were several prints by relatively unkown artists that were selling for $3000 unframed or $4000 framed and sometimes much more.

Having never sold a piece of fine art before, I'm entirely unfamiliar how this pricing works. How can you possibly justify an unoriginal print in the thousands? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the artist making money. I just can't believe a collector would spend such an amount when there is no rarity.

Any one familiar with the world of fine art photography care to expand on this subject.

I will give a small shot at this. This was a gallery's pricing not necessarily the price the origional photographer charged.
If it was film it is not a simple matter of hitting the print button. The prints are made one at a time and sometimes (usually) only a few are ever made. Who wants to be a printing machine. You make a print dodge burn whatever then the chemistry changes a bit (oxygen or the last print wore it out a bit) and you may not get the same print again. Granted you can make a different one and the ones printed over and over vary as the printer sees it differently.

The prints are only worth what someone is willing to pay and sometimes a high price makes some people willing to pay. I personally feel photographs should be accessible but if someone is not willing to pay say a weeks average salary (an average persons average salary whatever that is) for a print they really don't want it. I once had a show and someone wanted to buy the whole show I quoted a very reasonable price (about half a weeks average salary at the time for each) and they suddenly were not interested. They didn't want to pick one print they wanted everything. It struck me as a greedy reaction and I didn't want to sell them even one print. Bit of a rant here but man it sort of pissed me off.

The framing costs sound a bit high but maybe they were really really good frames. I remember visiting a couple of galleries in San Francisco years ago and some of the prices were quite high for prints that were a) not very well printed b) very non archival. Expensive prints should last a lifetime if the technology to make them last exists. OK stop with the rants already.

That's wishful thinking I think. They have some photos priced that high and then they have others priced at $1000 and it makes the "art collector" think he/she is getting a great deal.

Yeah I have seen some of these pictures for high prices. Then again I have seen some images on POTN that blow those images away.

That's what's so interesting about art. I would say that a great many of the images at this particular exhibit were complete crap. Some of it from some very famous artists. I think it comes down to self promotion more than anything else, which is unfortunate because I suck at that.

One of the reasons I love fine art photography is because it constantly breaks the rules that we learn for proper photography. I saw many pieces with the subject smack in the middle. I saw many body parts cropped at the wrong spot. Overexposed/underexpos​ed you name it. Someone out there will love it and will buy it. Alot of the pieces I liked were technically incorrect. But I've always been in the "photography is art" camp anyway.