Since the
downturn in the world economy and the falling property market, investors have been
looking for new areas of investment, and many
know from history that some works of art are better able to weather an economic
storm than any other investment area. It is therefore no surprise that the
price of art continues to rise whilst other areas of investment fall.
Like any
investment, there is always
some element of risk and art is therefore not necessarily a more a predictable
market than any other. However,
as long as the economic law of supply and demand continues to work, the fact
that supply is always limited and the demand is always higher ensures that the
value is increased. There is of course some need for expert historic knowledge,
but it is not the great masters that I want to focus on in this article. My
focus will be the more recent interest for investors over the last 10-15 years with
an acceptance modern art from lesser known and mostly living artists, and
within this there has also been a great interest in the relatively new art of
photography.
To date, the
highest amount paid for a photograph was in November 2011 when Andreas Gursky’s “Rhein II ”
made $4,338,500. prior to this Gursky sold the two parts of his “99
Cent” Diptychon separately for $2,480,000 & $3,346,456 respectively.
Another most notable sale at auction was in 2006 with one of photographic art’s early pioneers, Edward Steichen’s "The Pond-Moonlight" which fetched $2,928,000. Whilst the prolific and well known landscape photographer Ansel Adams recently brought a very respectable figure of $600,000 for one of his many works at auction. In respect to portraiture, Robert Mapplethorpe’s photograph entitled "Andy Warhol, 1987" sold for $643,200. All of Mapplethorpe’s work is of note, but the very subject of Warhol, who never underestimated the value of his own work, would also have done much to add value to this image.
The interesting
thing with a photographic process is that,
unlike painting, the method we know today is designed to produce multiple
copies of the same image. This process has lead to larger ownership of the same
image which in turn much favours the collector, for as long as an image is of a
limited number it can still have potentially great value. Therefore with modest
investment now in a fairly unknown artist’s
work an art collector could own a significant portfolio which would be unlikely
to devalue in price, but
would have the potential to increase significantly.
In the UK, photography as a collectable art form is
still some way behind the United States, which historically has always seen
photographs as of potentially high value. Within a few years, due to the continuing growth
of international internet art auctions,
we are likely to see photographic art in UK reaching the same values as in the US.
As a result,
there is no better time to invest in photographic art here in the UK than now.