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Does photography remain traditional art's poor relation? - British Journal of Photography 2002. The market for photographic prints continues to grow in the UK, spurred by important spaces such as the Barbican Art Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery.
Photography had been undervalued until now partly due to the reluctance of the Tate Gallery to take it on. The MoMA in New York has been showing photography since the 1930s, but even now the Tate Gallery has still not fully opened its doors to the medium.
No significant market for prints existed until the late 1960s according to Mark Hayworth-Booth, curator of photographs at London's prestigious V&A Museum. To illustrate his point he mentions David Hurn, a Magnum photographer who started his own collection in the early 1960s by swapping prints with other photographers. He cites the case of Bill Brandt to illustrate the kind of market that existed in around 1963.
Although Brandt was recognised as one of the country's greatest photographers at that time, there was little demand for copies of his work. "I had a couple of his prints which I'd swapped for some of mine", says Hurn. "and my wife saw them and wanted some prints herself. I knew if I asked Brandt directly he would insist on giving them to me, and so my wife bought two prints anonymously. They cost her £6 for the pair, and I believe they were the first prints he'd ever sold".
Haworth-Booth confirms that Brandt's charges were indeed low, when the V&A wanted to buy some prints for the Museum's collection. "In 1964 he was charging £5 a print which was pretty much cost price", he says, "Ten years later it had risen to £50 a print then suddenly it made a leap to £150 a print in 1975 when he signed a contract with Marlborough Fine Art".
