Early this month DLK Collection wrote a post estimating the approximate number of serious photography collectors there are in the world:
So let’s begin with photography fair attendance numbers. All of the estimates coming up are made with a mind to make the numbers as large as possible, to estimate on the outer edge of what the number might really be. I’ve got three data points from the most recent versions of each fair: AIPAD New York 2009: 8000 visitors, Paris Photo 2008: 35000 visitors, Les Rencontres D’Arles 2008: 60000 visitors. AIPAD is I believe a collector heavy show. So while there are clearly curators, professionals, artists, press and general photo enthusiasts in the crowd, a good portion are real buyers. My estimate is approximately half might fit into the $5000+ category (4000 people), and perhaps three quarters in the $1000+ group (6000 people). The two shows in France have a much larger portion of local photo enthusiasts in the crowd. For Paris Photo, let’s go with as much as 15% of the attendees in the $5000+ group (5250 people), and 25% in the $1000+ group (8750 people). Since Arles is mostly expositions, the percentages need to be even lower: at most 10% for the $5000+ crowd (6000 people) and 15% for the $1000+ crowd (9000 people).
They come up with around 5000-10000 collectors worldwide with a collector defined as spending $1000+ in a calendar year. These numbers strike me as really really vague (and are acknowledged as such) and necessarily inaccurate, but they’re a good place to start on a bigger question: how big is the serious photography world in general?
That is to say, how many people are seriously interested in contemporary art photography? That excludes the occasional dabblers and those that go to the blockbuster shows and little else; and, of course, having a Robert Doisneau poster up in your dorm room does not necessarily qualify you. This then, is all of us actively reading the photo-blogosphere, the photogs, the gallerists and collectors, the museum departments and critics, and those passionate about and otherwise engaged in what’s happening in photography now. To how many people, then, does photography really matter? How big is our potential audience? How many people are paying attention? What audience would always be there if the art-market all of a sudden unceremoniously dumped photography?
Given that everyone I’ve ever met in the photography world seems to be separated from me by, at most, two degrees, my gut feeling is that it’s not very large. Informal conversations with other photographers and bloggers regularly turn up numbers in the tens of thousands – 20,000. 30,000. At most, 50,000. Which would be in line, I think, with DLK’s numbers, which included both contemporary and vintage collectors, and which represents a subset defined by ability to spend and desire to collect.
Some other figures that might help define this number – Subscription (and sales) numbers from Schaden and Dashwood‘s e-mail newsletters; average attendance numbers for Jeu de Paume‘s contemporary photography shows (Alec Soth, Martin Parr, Sophie Ristelhueber, etc.); MFA’s awarded in photography every year; reader numbers for some of the more widely read photoblogs and online showcases; Print run and selling numbers for the Badger/Parr Photobook book; some real numbers for some of the estimates tossed around in the comments here.
Incidentally, my research on this subject dug up an estimation of $144 million for the size of the photography print market in 2006 as well as a fascinating article on the development of these markets, all available for francophones here.