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Moments of the Unknown - 136
Recorded: Aug. 21, 2025 Duration: 0:56:01Space Recording
Full Transcription
Thank you. Good morning.
What's up?
How are you, Nick?
I'm good.
I'm good.
It's a beautiful morning here in Alcadena.
I'm so happy you're our special guest today.
Yeah.
Excited. I'm good, man. I'm 136 days in.
Fucking doing this every day.
Making art. Talking to cool-ass people like you.
That's good.
But, you know,
so much to talk about.
Not sure how much time you have, but
I'll have a few questions
for you. Cool, cool.
Yeah, no, I got time to chill and hang out and chat.
I mean, it's been
fun watching this project and knowing
that this day was coming when we
would get to talk about it.
So it's, you know, crazy how if you just keep, yeah, time is here.
Time is now, it's speeding up, it's slowing down.
It's our perception, right?
Yeah, exactly.
But I want to, you know, before I ask you a few questions about yourself, your gallery,
everything
we've done together, what you're working
on with the desert, and what
artists you're looking forward to show
at your art fair in the desert,
I just want to quickly talk about
this video.
Because it's one of the most special videos
in the whole project.
I don't know if you know this, but you're, you're part of it, this project twice.
So the first time I just read that whole thing and it was so, it was so great.
And I was just like, of course, of course, this is, yeah, this is really nice.
I always write a long letter the day before I post these things, like kind of in the moment,
the day before I post these things, like kind of in the moment, trying to also, you know,
capture the feeling of, of the peace of the person, of the memory of the moment. And some,
some are longer than others with how I feel about the person. Like this one more so was about like
our entire friendship and our journey, um, meeting each other, making art together, working together.
um, meeting each other, making art together, working together. Yeah. Um, all that shit.
But, uh, I just want to like take a second to, you know, share that this, this, this video is
like the Easter egg of the whole project. And, and it's kind of, it kind of puts a question on
time and like what that means and how cinema and photography or editing kind of sets the timeline when you're working through time.
This whole project's been chronological.
Obviously, these podcasts are chronological every day,
and the shooting was every day.
But because I photographed you the first time on the trial run,
which was January 1st, and I think I shot
you around January
18th or something.
And then failed the first time.
Failing the project,
the camera broke,
the film didn't develop the first week.
So I was already fucked from the beginning.
that hurts your
pride. That hurts your failing that hurts you're like you know failing at
doing your art is hard and it teaches you a lot but in a way it's like to to
heal that to repair that failure to learn from it to you know I was able to
do it again the second time around.
You know, I started in April and now here we are in August, two years to the day.
And, and I decided like, I came to your backyard instead of the gallery.
I still photographed you with the Polaroid, but I kept that original video because there's just something so nuanced about how we shot that feeling, that image, but also like honoring the past, honoring the original,
like the first try and like that, that didn't go in vain and keeping that intact and at least
keeping one, you know, one of of those and and going through this whole project
without it up is a is kind of a miracle because there's so many variables like the cameras could
have broke or the film didn't develop and and i had to like count film like people count cards
to to to see like is this three minutes like how much have i shot within a week because
i didn't it didn't have any indicator and i just counted yeah and somehow after developing
everything every fucking picture of every day was there this time so for me it's like
that was meant to be the first time was not meant to be but this time was meant to be. The first time was not meant to be, but this time was meant to be.
And I want to just reiterate, just keeping the original video we made to honor all that shit,
to honor the failures, to honor the beginning. And does it still count is the question, because
does it have to be in the chronological or me showing up for you that same day?
Is the effort, is the energy, is the process regardless of what the result is?
You know, who makes the rules?
And I'm just curious.
I'm talking a bit much.
What are your thoughts about all this?
Yeah, I mean, I'd say you make the rules.
You're the artist.
You're the artist. You're presenting
it. What's always interested me about a lot of your practice is you set out with these parameters,
you know, where so many other people within kind of, you know, the aspect of, you know,
their fine art practice, you know, yeah, they have parameters. Yeah, they have a style.
But you, in a way, sometimes develop new styles within these parameters, which I think is interesting.
You know, but for me, I think, you know, yeah, I mean, it's not a question to me that it's a part of it and that it's included.
Yeah, it might be outside of these specific parameters, but it's all within the same conversation, right?
You know, it's all within that same intent and I think that's really what what it comes down to
you know with so much of the stuff is is the artist's intent because there are so many perceptions
and there are so many ways to perceive just the different realities of what people are looking at
but but also one of the things that I just want to touch on that I love you know that I was just
thinking about while you were talking is this aspect of like, you know, so, I mean, in today's kind of conversations around, around fine art photography,
so few people talk about just photography being history of humanity, you know, and so, you know,
there's that, that kind of element where it's, you know, it's the history of you trying this
project, it's the history of you, you know. It's the history of you figuring it out.
And while it might be a little bit separate,
it's not less important, I would say.
I just want to say thank you for acknowledging that.
And also, that's what this whole project is about.
It is humanity.
It is the record, the history, how we think of the future, how we think of human existence, honoring what Edward Steichen did with that first photography exhibition with all the photographers from around the world of Family of Man, Carl Sagan's gold record, Shooting It Into Outer Space.
it into outer space. The way I like to describe the intent here is more so of like how a caveman
was painting the cave wall, which could have been, you know, a football play of how to hunt an animal.
But for us, for this, it's kind of along the same lines as, you know, showing that oneness of humanity
that we are all one through Steichen's lens and also preserving
humanity in this container that floats throughout the universe that maybe someday will make
contact with a distant extraterrestrial civilization or maybe even ourselves in the
future that we reflect back to ourselves. So how do artists think about the past?
How do you think about preserving the future?
That's what this whole thing is.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, and I think it's important to recognize that aspect of humans have been communicating with images and symbols on walls longer than the languages that we speak today.
Right? which is that we speak today, right? You know, so it's, you know, it's arguable that, you know,
we became human when we started doing this, you know,
and started, you know, perceiving meaning through any type of image
or any type of symbol kind of a thing.
So, you know, and that's really what this whole kind of fine art conversation is, isn't it?
You know, is this building on visual language
and this building on describing our
feelings and emotions through this visual language and connecting, you know, so I think,
you know, and just to bring it back to technology, that's also why technology is always kind of at
the forefront of this, in my opinion, at the forefront of art, you know, because every time
we have a new technology or a new way to kind of create something, you know, we kind of recreate all these themes and all of these tropes over and over again, you know, to kind of reimagine how we can, you know, visualize this in our whole new world.
What do you think that obsession is to reiterate with new technology?
Because we are kind of communicating the same thing over and over again
yeah well i mean it's just a new way to do it but i also think it's generational
right because it's it's not the same generation getting the new technology it's a new generation
oftentimes getting this new technology and it's their interpretation of the past you know and i
think that's also how i think about
art a lot is it's a big conversation that people have been having with each other for
you know millennia at this point you know and that's why people like you know picasso or van
gogh or you know some something like that are so amazing is because they change the conversation
you know but oftentimes those conversations are changed because of technology you know it's like you think about Picasso and Van Gogh are great examples you know it's right
around photography and it's right around when painters can stop being painters and can start
thinking about you know painting if that makes sense well how do you correlate it to what's
happening now like with AI and stuff yeah yeah I mean it's just the new tool, right? You know, and so
it's, it's just a totally wild time, right? It's like the time of the printing press,
you know, where all of a sudden, you know, you can have hundreds of these books out there as
opposed to one copy in a tower somewhere, you know, and it's the same as TV and radio. I mean,
it's, it's another one of these things that's going to change humanity. You know, I can't say if it's good or if it's bad,
because it'll be bad for a lot of people. And it'll be good for a lot of people,
you know, just in different ways. So, you know, I, I just have trouble having opinions about it,
I guess, in that sense of like, there's so much unknown. much unknown and you know i think there's still a lot of
cycles to happen within it i mean artist rights of course need to get protected ip needs to get
protected but it also i think it's going to be interesting because i think 20th century and late
20th century ip is going to be or maybe not so much early 21st century but that those that ip
will be coveted because it'll be this original IP.
You know, it'll be, you know, it'll be known that it came from this and known that it came from that.
I don't know. I think a lot about that in terms of, you know, all of these really great 20th century archives that exist,
but have trouble finding places in museums and institutions.
And how are those things going to get preserved
you know because that will be you know the source material and that will be a record of history
you know that was un un unaltered I don't know if that's the right thing but I don't know if I
answered your question at all I don't really have an answer to the question I just I like your flow
of conversation and it leads me to asking you two questions. One, what does IP look like after AI?
Because none of it's original.
How do you create original AI if everything's derived off of what it's trained on?
Are we moving into a CCO culture because the IP is enmeshed with itself?
because of the IP is enmeshed with itself.
And then the second one is, if you can remember,
what is the struggles with all these IPs of the past generations?
Like, for example, some photography archives you might be speaking on
and where that fits today or in museums.
Yeah, I mean, it's all about value, right?
You know, it's like people want, speaking of the archives, you know, you've got these people that it's a whole, it's so complicated.
Like it's a whole cycle and it's all different people in different places from I need $10 million for this to please help me pay for this storage.
Right.
You know, and so it's finding individual solutions for all of those different
archives because they're all incredibly different every artist is different but really for me what
i'm really trying to do is find you know not so much talking to the gettys and the mochas and the
lakmas but talking to the you know the stanfords and the, you know, the institutions that have scholarship around these subjects,
you know, so, so it's trying to create, it's trying to find who's going to value these things
so then I can create value. So then I can bring that value back to the original owners and they
can feel like they, you know, got something for it. But also then at the next step, it's the
stewardship of that stuff through the next
generations. And that brings it to the AI point of it, where, you know, you've got so many of these
like trust lawyers, and, you know, people who set up estates and foundations, and like, they don't
even, they can't even comprehend what the next 50 years of IP law is going to look like with AI.
And that's the thing that's interesting. So, you know,
if you guys, if anybody here knows any young, you know, IP trust lawyers or things like that,
I'd love to talk to them because I'm trying to help write that stuff in the contract as well,
too, because it can be really restrictive. You know, when you buy an estate from somebody,
you know, they control a lot of the things of how you can use that estate, you know.
And so it's, you know, being able to write the right language in these contracts so that, you know, the next generation can have access to these images so that they can create, you know, in response to those images.
It has me thinking about that whole Disney IP fiasco where they keep pushing Supreme Courts to push back public domain.
Does it matter for future generations to hold IP if everything ends up in public domain anyway?
Does IP only matter while people are alive um or or
you know you know what i mean like how does the public things going into public domain uh
depreciate value or or increase it well there's a whole series of rules based off when it was made
how it was made if it was copyrighted when it was copyrighted and i'm learning more and more about
that every day.
But, you know, there's, you know, for a lot of times you do have the IP for, you know,
50, 75, 80 years.
So, you know, your family, you know, can live off of some of that. You know, obviously it's the, you know, top people within those worlds.
But, you know, if, you know, a photographer spent his whole life traveling the world and has a couple
kids and a you know a widow and wants to make sure they're taken care of you know like that's
what we're trying to do the fact of getting that work into you know an institution or university
that's going to not only take care of it but care about it and interact with it so how does that
relate to you know owning the ip of know, owning the IP of something and owning
the artwork of something? And let's say the family has the foundation and all that stuff
goes into public domain, but they retain all the original artworks. So dolasts the IP itself?
It depends on how smart the foundation is
in managing that artist's legacy.
Because there's tons of legacies that I see fade away
from bad management.
And then there's legacies that I thought weren't as good
as other ones that have thrived due to great management,
right? So I think that kind of brings back a lot to, you know, just, you know, bringing up
the conversation of community, right? Like, if you're making art, you're making art for
a community a lot of times, or have a conversation with a community. And so the smart estates are,
you know, people that are run by maybe a son, maybe a daughter,
maybe a niece or a nephew, but people who understand, who understood the conversation
that that artist was having with that community and are able to keep that conversation going,
you know, and that's something that I like to think that I'm good at, you know, is watching my dad
create these conversations about fine art and
why these fine art is important. And I've grown up to understand those conversations so that
not only I can continue those conversations, but I can identify the next generations that will even
care about those conversations, you know, because a lot of these conversations are not a lot, but
there's, you know, a fair amount of 20th century fine art conversations that the 21st century is
just not going to be interested in. Right. And so I've got to figure out,
you know, Hey, can I bring interest there?
And can I do something to create interest?
But also what are the things that are going to be interesting to the
community?
Let's talk a little bit about your gallery, your family, maybe a little intro.
We kind of just jumped into riffing
on shit um we'd love to learn more about fahey klein what that means the photography influence
you guys held in la for many many years how to get started who are the artists like i loved it
i'd love to hear from you yeah i mean you know my dad you know it's all my dad you know he started this whole thing he
you know from really just from a passion of photography was like a kid who grew up in
Linwood Compton you know came back from Vietnam as like a photo teacher at Compton Junior College
right and he was like I got to get another job was looking at basically being like a Sears
portrait photographer or working at a fine art gallery and you know he was already interested in fine art photography started working at the G. Ray Hawkins
gallery um you know in the 70s and you know was arguably the first photography specific gallery
on the west coast um and then he later you know started Fahey Klein with Randy Klein who was G. Ray's
ex-wife actually um and you, it was still this time when photography
was, like, trying to get recognized as a fine art. You know, it was, you know, people would say,
oh, that's, you know, people would say, oh, that's just photography, so forth and so on. But then my
dad even took it to another level, where he started doing fashion photography, like Peter Lindbergh,
Herb Ritz, you know, people like that.
And people were like, oh, no, that's just magazine editorial.
That's not photography.
And then he started, you know, showing people like Jim Marshall or, you know, Steve Shapiro,
and it would be pictures of musicians. And they say, oh, that's not rock and roll photography.
That's just rock and roll photography.
That's not fine art photography.
But what I, you know, really learned from a young age from my dad was, you know, going
back to that community thing.
It's all about, you know, finding these communities that identify with things and identify with you know
egos and personalities and you know creating a conversation that they can get excited about
and you know so i watched my dad do this for years and years but i joke all the time that you know
when he started doing photography photography was the n NFT of the fine art world, you know,
not just, you know, as a joke, but like, really,
if you think about it, you know,
it had a lot of the same kind of conversations
around authorship, ownership, reproductivity,
you know, all of that.
And it's so, it was so ironic for me, you know,
cause I'm on the board for APAD
and all of these other things, you know,
where I'm talking to all these 70 year old dealers,
80 year old dealers.
And, you know, when they want to, to you know have a conversation about photography and nfts and the difference it's
they're always a surprise when i bring that kind of back to it but yeah so i grew up in this whole
world of you know shooting you know peter beard at the openings and shooting all you know because
i would take all the party pictures when i was like 10, 11, 12, 13. By the time I was 14, I was mortified to do it.
But yeah, and then, you know, kind of.
Can I ask you a quick question?
Yeah.
Before you continue.
I'm so interested in this idea of how, like this crossover of how early photography,
fine art, you know, perceptions in the art world and how we're seeing it as goofy as might have people
have thought as NFTs are now, um, to them, to the art world. My question for you is why has
photography always been that medium that's not quite seen as an art form in the digital art
space, in the fine art space, it created its own niche.
And it's like, when do you ever think we'll start seeing,
you know, sales like we've seen with paintings
reach larger than what Man Ray has recently sold for?
Or does it just take time because it is a new medium?
It just takes time.
It just takes time.
And I mean, I think the,
the one of the biggest kind of
things there to speak about is just the reproductivity of it right you know doing
additions doing different reproductions you know not they're not being just one as in a painting
or sculpture you know and i think that controls a lot of the value but but i would also say
you know okay great you've got you know a painting that goes for 80 million. But if that photography, if that photograph is an edition of 10 that have each gone for 8 million, doesn't, is that the same or is that different? Right? You know, but also I think it's, you know, just, it's the value of the, of the output.
You know, just, it's the value of the, of the output.
So I think, you know, it's also interesting that what you're talking about, because we
are, you know, and that's the thing, like my, you know, dad was selling Man Ray is for
1500 bucks in the seventies, you know, like, and now we're having these collectors come
back because a large part of our market is secondary market stuff, you know, things that
we've sold in the past or a collector wanting a 20th century or even a 19th century work and us knowing where to find
it and get it for them and, you know, being reliable to know that it is what it is. But
yeah, I mean, you know, now all of these all, you know, it's like those men raised and all those
high price, you know, things, the photographs, they're in painting auctions, you know, and I
think that's a really important thing to recognize, know and we're working with all these estates and when you know the auction houses
come around yes the photography specialists but it's also the other specialists because they
realize that it is breaking into this market you know and i think another thing important thing to
kind of recognize and think about you know it's like right now everybody's talking about you know
the market down markets on a downturn you know so far and so on, which it is, but it's not the entire market.
You know, at times like this, we actually see more interest for, you know, kind of, I guess you call
them like blue chip 20th century photographs, you know, because I think you also got to think about
like artworks can get bright and fade, you just like that like you know the moth analogy
right you know and that's what i've always talked about with that slow burn tell me tell us
like just because something's important and special and selling it freeze today
doesn't mean it's going to be worth anything in 25 years and that goes back to understanding
your community having a long-term conversation with your community, and building your market in a way that's, like, sustainable.
You know, nobody can, like, hoppy stick forever.
How do you build a sustainable market?
Is there a way or just a different path for everybody?
It's a different path for everybody.
You know, you've got to – and I have, like, a bad analogy for this where it's, like, you know, you've got to know what you sell. Then you've got it and i have like a bad analogy for this where it's like
you know you got to know what you sell then you got to know what that market is you know so it's like if you sell croissants and i'm a butcher don't come to the butcher shop trying to sell
your croissants like you need to know who's buying your stuff why and why they buy it and and then
you can understand more about how you can have a long
term conversation with those people but we can make you know but we can make steak croissant
sandwiches and both collabs totally but i think a good point is how many people eat a steak and
croissant sandwich every day versus how many people just eat a croissant every day that's
that's fair right you know because it's about the size of the market and how much the market can sustain
right you know so i see this all the time with young artists they get some success
and then they track out their you know p&l for 10 years and they just expect the exact same growth
not understanding what that growth was in the cycle of that growth and then all of a sudden they have to fire half their studio because they're
not making the same amount of money. You know,
and I see this all the time where artists come to me and they go, Oh,
well I sell really great with this gallery, this gallery, this gallery,
and this gallery and this gallery and this gallery and this gallery and this
gallery. And I'm like, well, we all share clients.
So who am I going to sell it to? You know,
and people don't understand how small those communities can be, which is,
you know,
something that I'm so interested in right now is basically like fine art streaming.
I've been working with this company called Vasari for two years now, and we're working with LG, and it's pretty much the Samsung frame.
But it's this idea of expanding the market and then being able to charge less but still have a bigger reach and
at the end of the day who what what artist is more successful right somebody who's interacting
with five million people on a daily basis and making x or someone who's dealing with 50 people
on a daily basis but still making the same guidelines i would argue it's the person who's
influencing five million people yeah i, I don't know.
I haven't experienced that yet.
But I want to ask you this.
Do you think now that photography is moving into these more so one-of-oneness
through NFTs and authorship ownership,
will that make an effect as photography as art form versus their
reproducibility, even though there are still additions,
there's still prints being made, et cetera.
But is that the right way forward for photography?
Like should a photograph be owned by a single person?
And why has the addition kind of became the standard for photography
anyway?
Well, one, because you can make multiples right and then you know it was the addition was i think influenced by fine art you know because
you you look at a lot of the like when i sell early photography there's no additions it's
signatures and also those guys were stoked anybody would give them any money for their shit right
you know like there's there was like the most i was on this i was at arl one year and it was like
2015 right it was like 10 years ago and it was duane michaels martin parr and jr right jr had
just had his massive tate retrospective or whatever it was and Martin Parr and Dwayne Michaels I don't
know if anybody's ever heard Dwayne Michaels speak but Dwayne Michaels is hilarious and he was just
busting JR's balls the whole time basically saying to JR dude I was stoked to sell a picture in the
back of a coffee shop for a hundred bucks when I was your age you just had a whole show at the
Tate like what the hell has happened right so you know
that I think is a really great explanation you know within a generation you've seen guys who
were just excited to sell a picture for a hundred bucks and there was no fine art photography market
to somebody who I think was like in his late 30s at the time having a full retrospective about his
photography at a major museum,
right? So, but I think it also goes back to what I was saying before in terms of you have to understand your audience. Like if your audience, if you're making the type of work
that's going to a super contemporary high-end audience, yeah, you're going to want to do one
on one. You're going to want to do three of three because you don't want to have a bunch of
editions sitting empty, open on the market, right? you're jeanette beckman who took you know some of the most iconic you know
punk rock hip-hop pictures through the 70s and 80s like you're never going to take those pictures
again and people only want those moments so you're going to do larger editions of, you know, 25, 40, 50 in the smaller
sizes, because it's about cultural, you know, capital and influence and having it out there.
And there's more people that want that, you know, and those people don't really mind if it's, you
know, an edition of 25, where that contemporary group of people really mind if it's, you know,
an edition of 25. But for for me i think there's something really
important about having additions because additions prove the value a lot of times because if you know
some if i'm trying to sell a painting or i'm trying to sell this single object that single
object is based on a value of other objects that are not the same, but are similar. But if I'm selling
an edition picture, I can go to this collector and I say, no, no, I've already sold this for
$10,000 to four other people. So four other people think this is worth $10,000. And if you
don't think it's $10,000, that's fine. Don't buy it, but don't tell me it should be less because
I've already sold it to these people for that money. And I'm not going to reduce their investment in this artist because you
think it should be worth less.
I don't know.
Does that make sense?
That makes great sense.
And it makes me want to ask you about how did these artists know their
audience in the first place?
Like if you're a fine artist and you make very personal work,
like artists who show in your gallery,
where are those audiences versus the jeanette beckmans who everyone loves keith herring and david bowie
so that's kind of like a universal audience so how do you how do you navigate that
well i think you got to just like make what you are authentically going to make.
And then it's like hard, right?
This is the chicken egg question.
So, you know, it's like, I think a great example is, you know, like music, right? Like, you know, if you make crazy high energy EDM music that could like rock a stadium,
yeah, you're going to try to rock stadiums.
But if you are a jazz musician, you know, that's in a night stadium yeah you're gonna try to rock stadiums but if you are a jazz
musician you know that's in a nightclub you know like playing like a stand-up bass in the back
like you just got to know what it is like you can't be that stand-up bass guy and want to go
rock an entire stadium that makes sense so you just got it comes back to that thing of you know
knowing what you make do you make Do you make croissants?
Or do you sell steaks?
Because it's going to have a different business model,
and it's going to have a different market,
and it's going to have a different audience. Because there's no one art market.
Right, and we've seen that with what's going on here in NFTs as well.
Yeah.
I mean, and I think that's...
And now maybe talk about the high
desert art fair a little bit yeah let's let's talk about let's talk about that yeah so like that's
you know part of my thing too where you know i think a lot of people maybe like don't realize
how much money galleries spend on art fairs and when we when we spend so much money on art fairs we can only bring what we know
we're going to sell for a ton of money right you know and I feel so bad when you know we're working
with an emerging photographer and they say like oh can you bring me to this fair can you do this
and I'm like no because I spent this much money on it and I need to sell twice as much to even make
that money back so I don't have time to introduce you to a new audience.
Like I don't have that investment right now.
I need to bring the things that are going to sell for a ton of money
so I can make a little bit.
So wait, I have a question.
So how do those artists who are emerging that you are starting to work with
find that audience if they never have that opportunity to show,
like they have to prove a track record but
where do you start your track record it's like it is the chicken and the egg and then and then the
other part is if you know you're already going to sell that shit that you're going to sell the fair
why didn't you sell it before or why does it why does it need to sell the fair because sometimes
you need to bring it to the fair to sell it because like if i sometimes i have to like sometimes that collector in paris isn't going to come to los angeles so it's like my opportunity to like load a bunch of
you know load a bunch of ammunition for people that i know that are going to be there
gotcha and then and then for the emerger like how do you how do you build your audience if you're
if you're new and but you're good you got to work with a new emerging gallery that's trying to build its audience but you
also have to come with a little bit of an audience right like you can't like i mean i think you know
music is another great analogy you know it's like you're not gonna have universal sign you
if you have zero fans right like you kind of gotta you gotta show up with a little bit of people
and that comes from
the work and finding your community and understanding who you're making things for
there's no there's no answer you know it's so funny i'm i'll just share by by my my journey
you know yeah you know thinking my my audience was on instagram and you know trying to be
discovered and sharing my photography, you know,
the twins and all those other things. And then coming here, you know,
trying out Twitter way before NFTs and there was nothing crickets.
And then yet NFTs come along and like, this is where I guess my audiences,
this is where I'm received. And it's just so funny.
Do you think it's about timing?
Do you think you have to have the work already made that's authentic to you and keep sharing it on all these different platforms as long as you can throughout different times and don't give up because you never know when it hits?
Yes.
Yes.
Because nobody, like, it sucks, but, like, nobody cares what you make.
Right?
Like, at the end of the day.
Well, I know that.
But more so, you have to find the moment to show them the thing they'll care about.
Right?
And honestly, you're in a great position.
This generation is in a great position with social media because you can comment on current events and you can comment on all kinds of other stuff
but it is there's so much about timing with this stuff and there's so much about it being timed
with a action item at the end of it you know because as much as you can share on social media
some of that is bad right because you know if and I and this happens all the time with us you know
an artist will come to us and they'll be like oh I have a whole brand new unseen project that I'd some of that is bad right because you know if and i and this happens all the time with us you know
an artist will come to us and they'll be like oh i have a whole brand new unseen project that i'd
love to work on work with you guys on and then they show me the stuff and i'm like what are you
talking about you've been posting on this on instagram for the past year and they're like oh
but i've never exhibited it and you're like no you 100 have exhibited it all over the internet
you know so it's that thing of like
having you know and i talk about ammunition on the dealer side but it's also as an artist
you know having these things locked and loaded and ready to go and that's why i i always talk
about books being so important for artists you know but isn't showing the art part of getting
the audience so when you have a show you could sell it when it's available like isn't that like counterintuitive to like you don't need a show to sell the artwork
like this that's that's is the show the ego yes like we we do shows like just keep the party like
like the notion that i have to have an exhibition to sell work is, is the, is the kind of a big problem right there.
Right.
Because I'm not going to do an exhibition with an artist unless I'm already selling the work.
Like we don't take those types of risks as an investment.
Right.
So like when I work with an artist, I'm like, Hey, give me your stuff.
I show it to clients that buy things all the time.
And I show it to new clients. And if we can get a flow with that and an audience, because look,
at the end of the day, if I'm a bakery, and all these people are coming to me to buy baked goods, so I can't show them a piece of meat and have them want to buy it, they go somewhere else to
buy that too. So, so but that's also why books are so important, right? Because it doesn't matter when
you did the show or when you did the work, like you need to make the work. And the record of that
work is far better as a book than it is as an exhibition, because the exhibition is only up
when it's up. But when you have that book, I can, I sell, I sell more art from books than I do from
exhibitions, because people come in, they look at something in the background and then I can, I sell, I sell more art from books than I do from exhibitions because people come in,
they look at something in the background and then I go, oh, okay, cool. You like that? Well,
then you'll probably like this. You'll like this. You'll like this. You'll like this. You'll like
this. And I'm showing them a really nice high quality book and it comes across and they can
see the print and they can go through all of that. They don't care when the show is.
Does that make sense? Yeah. I, I totally get it from the gallerist point of view but from the
artist point of view that's kind of what we live up to like to to be seen to be celebrated to
to show what the work has been done and you know have a moment and bring your people together and
i think again i think there's somewhere between ego and and celebration and community is like the
recipe for why we want to have shows.
It's like we fucking did this for so many years.
I want to show it and experience it and have my friends come see it.
But what I'm saying also is like you do that in a very strategic way so you can maximize the value on top of that.
So if you don't have a book book don't do a show because you
can't get the tail end of the sales if you don't you know there's so many different elements of
that and that's what i work with an artist all the time is like hey we're going to make this book
and then we're going to do four exhibitions globally from this gallery to this gallery to
this gallery to this gallery so that that whole audience sees you right and i think the other
thing for artists to really be thinking about is it's like it's it's it it only matters what the collectors want right like it's not about what the galleries
are doing what they're doing because that's what works best with the collectors it's not because
that's what they want to be doing right you know and so but also i think for artists they got to
realize like a collector doesn't want to eat an In-N-Out hamburger every day, right?
You know, it's like you've got to give these people a break.
Like you can't just expect them to keep buying your shit over and over and over and over again.
And I would say that, you know, there's a lot of value added from pulling back and letting your secondary market interact for a while.
pulling back and letting your secondary market interact for a while. Because if you've done that
correctly, you'll be able to come back into the market with a new project at a higher price point.
Well, I actually want to ask you a few questions about that. And I've had some struggles with some
of my collectors who were cautious of me releasing my new project, Moments of the Unknown, and they
wanted me to have secondary sales with,
you know, Twins and Smoke and all these other projects I was doing before I start release,
because you have to create demand if you have too much supply. And he said I had too much supply.
But it's like, if I keep regurgitating the same work, doesn't that bore the community? And,
you know, especially this
community where it works very fast, and we always want the new and the next? How do you balance,
like, having something new to say, and also releasing the new stuff brings attention back
to the old stuff and balancing that versus just waiting for the market to catch up with your demand.
I'm still learning this.
And I actually had to just say, fuck it.
I need to release it because the art needs to be released.
I can't spend my life trying to time the market.
And that's another question I want to talk about earlier.
But what are your thoughts as the gallerists in that sense? But I think also it's, you know, you part of your art practice is releasing the work.
Right. At least I think that all the time.
You know, this is this conversation right now is part of your art practice.
You know, it's it's, you know, doing these little lectures around every single thing.
So, you know, for you, you're in a really interesting position because what you do
is this right I guess all I'm saying is like take a break you know let people be a little bit thirsty
for that you for your next thing is I think more of what you know your collectors and I'm saying
for artists you know because I have artists all the time where or not all the time but a handful
of times where you know there's four new bodies of work that
come out over six years. And each one of them is an addition is a series of, you know, 50 pictures
that are combined edition of 15. I'm like, there's not that like, not everybody on the planet is
going to buy your shit. You know, like, like that. And then they're like, well, why aren't my edition
selling out like my
other edition sold out in the past and i was like well because there were six years in between those
projects and now there's 18 months in between the projects i'm not able to sell out a project like
this in 18 months i need six to eight years so that that's a great point but i also want to talk about the speed at which people move in this
space in nfts and like literally a day is like 10 months so and this idea of relevancy it's like if
you don't drop anything or engage you're for you're forgotten and no one's even looking at
your shit because everyone's focused on the new shit yeah so it's like we're fucking fucked man it's like the i don't even know what to say or do at this point
it's like man like as much as we want to engineer success and sales and demand and i think at the
end of the day it's just about showing up whether you have something to sell or not, whether you have something to say or not.
It's being present
maybe for your peers,
for the space.
Maybe just, I don't know. I honestly do
not know. Still figuring
that out.
But it's just, again,
at the pace at which we release,
people might not know
who you are. They care about you now but
in 18 months they're like who the fuck who is that again so but also like i think there could
be another way you know i think you know you could i mean it's interesting right it's like
that understand i like i'm just trying to think of an analogy within the photo space and how
let's use croissants and meat. Yeah, exactly.
No, but I guess, you know, I guess a good example would be, you know, someone like Cardi Bresson never additioned his prints, you know, because he never thought, you know, and I guess like for you guys, it's this way of like, you're just at the, I mean, like I put you at the forefront of a lot of this stuff and a lot of, you know, the forefront of this, you've just gained,
you've just snowballed, you know, and you've gained momentum and you've gained mass and
you can't stop.
And I, I, I recognize it and I don't, but I don't necessarily know how you change that
because at the end of the day, that's your audience and that's what your audience expects.
at the end of the day that's your audience and that's what your audience expects you know so
it's like do you change your do you change how your audience perceives you or do you just find
a new audience you know finding a new audience is a lot harder i'll tell you that right especially
when you never had one and now you kind of do why do you want to fuck that up don't you want to
continue fostering it but But it actually goes back,
I think maybe the answer goes through this.
And we said it earlier, earlier on in this talk.
Maybe there is no formula.
Maybe there's no proof to success.
Maybe it's just do what's fucking right for you
at the time you need to do it.
That is right.
You know, we're always looking for when's the right
time when's the right time you can't time it you can't like again earlier we were talking about
the uh the pace at which you release and the time at which you find your audience
and it takes years i just think you just gotta do it do what feels right it's the cheesiest cliché thing we could say but i think it's the
most honest and real like it has to feel right yeah oh yeah 100 but it's also extra hard because
everything we're talking about right now is basically what it is to be an entrepreneur
right like you know you are creating a business and a product for an audience that is new that has not been
around anymore just like any other tech product right or any other new you know what have you
and so it's I think people need to start thinking about it through that lens also you know because
I think that will help people understand it that you know there isn't a you know it's like I don't
you know I don't tell people I'm an entrepreneur I oh, I have this and I do this and I do that and I do this,
you know, like to be like, I'm an artist is kind of like saying I'm an entrepreneur. It's like,
okay, cool. But what do you do? Like, who do you, what audience do you serve and what do
you serve them with? You know, if it was, yeah. Man, well, I, here's a good, here's a good question to shift gears.
What do you think the future of photography looks like?
And I know me and you have always talked about this.
We've tried to do it with Quantum and other,
and you've done it with Fellowship and other photo-based platforms.
We've worked together.
We've done it.
We've sold it.
We've built those audiences but what
does this medium have for in the future especially i don't want to compare it to ai
but you can't ignore that ai is another medium that could be based on photography that's not
so much photography it's trained with photography i wouldn't put them in the same caliber at all or competing against or even compare because they're just one's digital
art one's photography um what do you think the future looks like do you think it's more of one
of ones what and not just not just that specific question but i would go i'm in my brain I go the complete opposite direction like I go to the point of in
you know hopefully five to ten years from now every screen on the planet has some sort of art
that's programmed to that person and when I say some sort of art you know that could be like you're
really into Marvel so Marvel's on your tv or you're really into the Patriots so that's on your tv
because you know we're very snotty in terms of what we consider fine art or not art, but it's
just about image and design and emotion attached to symbols, you know? And so I think, you know,
we're going to live in a world hopefully soon where everybody can have a conversation about
art and photography will be a part of that. AI will be a part of that AI will be a part of that
but I I'm way more interested in what you know a hundred million people are looking at every day
than a small group of people if that makes sense but don't we have that with like TikTok Twitter
Instagram millions of people, shares?
Like what's beyond that?
That's the Bud Light.
I feel like that's the Bud Light generation, right?
It's like fast, it's easy, it's cheap.
Like when are we going to get into the IPAs where people like start to, and I think this
is already happening, where you start to like siphon off these audiences, you know, and get people to look at this stuff
and develop those micro communities. So yeah, we are there where everybody can kind of, you know,
create an audience and kind of have a conversation with that. But that's still a very lean forward
interaction. I guess I'm talking more about the lean back interaction, where, you know, like when I think of TV art on TVs, I don't think it's like something you're going to sit down and look at like you watch Netflix or look at TikTok.
It's going to exist like art in your home, but it's going to rotate in not just high-end galleries, but bring in Getty Images and bring in all of these other partners from sports teams to entertainment to just create this whole thing for people to interact with passively.
It's almost like penny stocks in a way.
You're not getting the full attention.
You're just getting this passive attention,
which is what creates your environment.
So let me ask you this.
What are your thoughts, again, earlier?
We were talking about archives and foundations.
Me and you have always spoken about the Irving Penn Foundation,
wanting to get them on chain, what the possibilities are.
Have you seen these projects like with Dimitri Czerniak's,
I forgot what's it called.
It was the one with Moholy-Naji collaboration with their estate.
Yeah, the one that was a Perry fellow.
the one that was a Perry fellow.
Yeah, I forgot what that one was called.
Yeah.
I forgot what that one was called.
you know,
Death Beef's kind of interpretation of
Moy Bridge.
I would like,
are we going to start seeing more
collaboration with foundations?
And furthermore,
it's like,
I would love to,
if there was an opportunity with you to do something with the Irving Penn Foundation.
In the same way, maybe even using AI and bringing that to life in new ways.
Well, I think that goes back to those legacy complications, right?
It's hard for the Penn Foundation to do that because so many of the people that have invested in the print
are a part of that.
I'm losing you. I'm losing
you on the connection here.
Oh, better.
Hold on. Try again?
Is this better?
No, it's like...
It's like...
How are we doing?
Say something.
Is that fair?
No, we have these little choppy chops.
How about that?
Sorry.
Fuck, we were on a good roll.
We're pulling.
But yeah, basically,
is that better?
No, it's not.
It's cutting off everything.
I mean, let's leave.
All right, well,
oh, fuck.
I was going to say,
let's just end it here, but we'll keep going
for another five or ten minutes.
This has been a very good conversation.
Nick's actually one
of my favorite
photography people, so he knows
a lot about photography. Nick,
are we good?
How are we doing?
Yes, perfect. Loud and clear.
Let's spend five more minutes and then we'll
wind down the show
so i would say you got to figure out something to do with the irving penn foundation that doesn't
upset the audience that is already invested in their work you know and and it's just finding
that collaboration right well how to bring the work to life in new ways for new audiences. Yeah. Well, and so I'm just going to go back to plugging the art fair where like we're charging like thirty five hundred dollars for these booths and having like local people come out so that galleries and people like that can actually do something different. photo and your bill is 80 grand, you know, so it's like, you need, there needs to be on the
institutional side, more opportunities for artists and curators and galleries to be able to take
chances, right? And we haven't even talked about how much the gallery world has changed, where,
you know, there's so few people who actually have brick and mortar spaces anymore. You know,
the idea of consultants and, you know,
direct sales, like that's a whole other element that we've had to pivot through and learn how to
work through. How is Fahey doing through that, throughout that whole challenge? It's fine. You
know, you just have to understand, you know, it's us, it's us having, you know, we've been around,
we're going to celebrate our 40th anniversary next year.
So we very clearly know what works for us and what doesn't work for us, you know, and that's what it's about.
You know, so for us, when artists change and pivot and do different things that doesn't align with our business model, sometimes we have to part ways.
And it's not, you know, bad blood or it's not, you know,
there's nothing to be upset about. It's just, Hey, this is a direction you're taking and
our investment and our business model doesn't work that way anymore. So we can't support you
in the way that we were supporting you, but we'll support you in other ways, you know? So you just
have to change, you know, I think about the gallery way more as an incubator than a gallery.
You know, every artist is an entrepreneur and it's our job to kind of help them through
that process, you know.
Right.
And sometimes their businesses change, their businesses change.
And, you know, you have to still support them through, you know, things that might not be
as beneficial for the gallery.
So, Nick, do you have any closing thoughts or something we might've skipped over
before we wind it down here?
I think I'm good.
Awesome.
Me too.
Dude,
thanks again for being in the project,
for sharing all your wisdom with us,
for being a good friend.
Yeah,
dude.
Perhaps I'll see you in paris photo
this year yeah are you coming out to la anytime soon oh man i don't think i don't think i'll be
out there anytime soon yeah yeah no and then maybe maybe new year's or something for
chilling in the desert i'll be out here in the garden waiting for you when you come back
awesome love the garden yeah all right man have a great day thanks everyone who's listening
you too thank you everybody bye
