as for the mental health stuff, its usually hard to empathize if you havent experienced chronic depression/anxiety yourself, so what people do is sympathize instead. interestingly enough, i was just watching jessica and ash's recent collab video and they briefly talked about political correctness vs emotional correctness where sometimes people have good intentions but unfortunately falls short on doing or saying the right things. perhaps theres whats happening here?
as for the prints, i personally feel that its not a big deal. ive sold art myself before and theres always this discussion of "am i overpricing? or am i underpricing?" especially when you take into consideration the entire climate between consumers and the artists themselves. producing art, especially ones with a physical form, is not cheap. im not sure about photograph prints, much less uk based ones,
but i know theres a lot of factors that can impact a print's price:
- size
- paper material (matte, pearlescent, how thick or thin it is, etc.)
- quality of the print (no colour misprints, etc.)
- or whether he went to a printing shop or done it himself (every manufacturer/printing shop has different prices but most of the time its cheaper for bulk and pricier for individual printing. however, if he had done it himself, then its a different story. )
- if its a digital camera, then its a matter of him having the printer to print it. hed have to setup the file itself and make sure the colours and the image quality is good otherwise itd come off as blurry or just plain wrong. its still pretty expensive to buy a good quality laser printer, much less occasionally have to buy ink refills.
- if its traditional film, first youd have to have a dark room, cut out the film you want to use. expose it onto photo paper using fancy contraption that ive forgotten what its actually called cz i only learned about it when i was a highschooler, and put it through a bajillion chemical baths where you have to methodically time it how long to dip it in not to mention know the specific percentages of the chemical mixtures first of all, to develop it. its much more work intensive and time consuming since you have to dry then bathe them over and over in different chemical baths, not to mention you actually have to have access to these things
- then theres the whole artist's labour and creative work on the art itself
- supply and demand
anyways........im not quick to judge him for upping the prices of his prints because in the first place, it is a much bigger size than the cheaper print sets and is limited edition. if he had upped the price but still kept the same smaller prints, THEN id raise an eyebrow, but he didnt. still, im not entirely sure what the average pricing for photo prints in UK tho so theres still a chance that he might be intentionally overpricing. im just here to shed some light on the process of it.