The Discerning Eye: Creating Value in the 1970s American Market for Photographs

Abstract

The 1970s “photo boom” was a critical period in the history of photography, one that irrevocably cemented the medium’s status in the art and museum worlds, its legitimacy as a subject of academic study, and its desirability as an object of both institutional and private collections. And yet, thorough investigations of this pivotal decade have rarely been attempted, and are most often couched within larger surveys of photography’s history and its acceptance as an art form. Even more conspicuously absent are dedicated studies of the photography market, which emerged in the late 1960s, developed over the course of the 1970s, and which has continued to influence the circulation, study, and exhibition of photographs in the decades since. This dissertation addresses this absence by systematically examining four key aspects of the 1970s photography market: the market’s previously overlooked relationship to the print revival of the 1950s and 1960s, and its attendant debates about “original” prints; the evolution and significance of the “vintage print” as a core marketing concept; the professionalization of photograph conservation, along with early examples of photographic forgery; and the popularization and standardization of limited edition prints and portfolios, especially as vehicles for selling, collecting, and investing in photography. This dissertation focuses on developments in the United States and England from 1969 to 1980, bookended by the opening of New York’s Witkin Gallery and the founding of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD). It also, however, considers historical antecedents and developments across the first half of the twentieth century, as well as the photo boom’s reverberations through the present day. This project takes as its most important source material a variety of often neglected texts from the period of the photo boom, including auction and dealer catalogues, collecting guides, and articles in both the popular and specialist press. It also makes ample use of archival resources, recent secondary literature, and dozens of new interviews with important participants in the 1970s photo boom. Such resources, considered as a whole, offer vivid first-hand access to this crucial moment in photography’s recent history.