It’s that season again, my favorite Autumn time. And among other wonderful things comes the photography auction season. Last week was the annual benefit at the Center for Photography at Woodstock and just two weeks away is the parallel event at the Photographic Resource Center in Boston.
The Woodstock event was different this year, with only 62 lots, down from 200+ in past years, and the quality was way up. I was almost priced out but I got this beautiful Keith Carter for a good bid.
The PRC will have a much larger selection split between a smaller live auction and an extensive silent one, but some of the juicy stuff has already been sold with their ebay-like “buy it now” option.
Both of these organizations depend heavily on benefit auction revenue for their program budgets, and both are some distance from New York City, the center of photo galleries and collectors. So how to proceed? Move the event to be closer to the market? Go online? Go upmarket, go down?
It’ll be interesting to see what happens next.