Anybody interested in investing in photography could do worse than listen to the advice of the collector Michael Wilson.
Wilson began collecting in the late Seventies and now owns one of the largest private collections of photography in the world, much of which is housed in the Wilson Centre for Photography, a study centre that is open by appointment in west London. He is also chairman of the National Media Museum, a post for which he qualifies not just as a recognised expert on photography: his father, Lewis Wilson, was the first actor to play Batman on screen, and his stepfather was "Cubby" Broccoli, the producer of the James Bond films, as Wilson has been since 1979.
Last week, he was at the Photographers' Gallery in London for a conference on collecting contemporary photography hosted by ArtTactic, a company that monitors the progress of a number of sectors of the contemporary art market. In its report, ArtTactic found the market for contemporary photography expanding, especially because of the influx of practitioners from China, Japan, India and the Middle East. It also noted the huge price differential between contemporary artists included in specialised photography sales, from the 19th century to the present day, and those selected for the more rarefied contemporary art sales, in which artists such as Andreas Gursky, Jeff Wall, Richard Prince and Hiroshi Sugimoto have all exceeded the million-dollar mark.
The distinction between the two markets is somewhat artificial and foreign to a collector like Wilson, who sits firmly in the specialist photography sales camp. An expert on 19th-century photography, he also collects contemporary, but has his reservations. You can collect for all sorts of reasons, he says, and one of them is to acquire status. "The White Cube and Gagosian galleries are all about status," he says, referring to two of Britain's leading contemporary art galleries, "and are not the places to start a collection."
Instead he recommends galleries such as Michael Hoppen, Hackelbury and Atlas, which have lower prices, and where dealers will invest time in explaining things. A particular concern, which comes from preserving old photographs, is whether contemporary photographs need a similar amount of attention; and they do. Many chromogenic colour prints from the early Nineties, known as C-prints (even by the world's most expensive photographer, Andreas Gursky), have faded, and have had to be re-printed. It is generally acknowledged, the conference heard, that one of the icons of digital photography, Jeff Wall's 1993 digitally manipulated light-box transparency, "A Sudden Gust of Wind", in the Tate collection, "has problems." Clearly, experts are still grappling with issues relating to the preservation and conservation of digital prints, and can't predict how long they will last. As one conservator at the conference said: "Every collector should have a disaster plan."
Contemporary photography will feature heavily in New York next week at the various art fairs clustered around the Armory Show and at the contemporary art auctions at Phillips de Pury & Co, Sotheby's and Christie's. For those interested to see photography in a more historical context, AIPAD (the fair for the Association of International Photography Art Dealers) runs in New York from March 18-21. The next round of specialised photography auctions are also in New York in April, while the big event to look forward to is Sotheby's New York sale of the Polaroid collection in June, in which a Chuck Close self-portrait is a highlight.
If London feels a bit left out – fewer auctions, no photography fair, and an excellent listings magazine, PLUK, which has ceased to come out – perhaps it is because, as Wilson says, there are just not enough collectors here to support these ventures. Meanwhile there are literally dozens of exhibitions selling modern and contemporary photography, from the Photographers' Gallery print room (under £750 each) to art galleries such as Thomas Dane, where the three-dimensional photos of Irish artist John Gerard cost £48,000; Alison Jacques, where prices for the performance-related work of Ana Mendieta start at £15,000; or next week's Irving Penn show at Hamilton's, where prices will range from £40,000 to £160,000.
And for those making the rounds for the first time, here's some typically unexpected advice from the voice of experience. Whereas most advisors tell you to buy what you like, Wilson says: "Don't buy what you like, necessarily. There is a difference between the instant appeal of a media image and the work of art which takes more time to digest." His tip: "The 19th century is the most undervalued area for collectors."