The Collector | Photographic art finds a new market in China

Officially, a record 30,000 people attended Photofairs Shanghai this month, though the real number is likely to be higher, given the many touts outside the venue reselling used VIP passes.

Most attendees were only looking, but dealers were encouraged by the number of visitors who expressed an interest in buying one day.

“Photographs are cheaper than paintings, and there are a lot of new homes, offices, hotels that need art on the wall,” says Leo Xu, founder of Leo Xu Projects, in Shanghai, who had sold 30 prints by the third day of the four-day fair.

As in any art market, it is the serious collectors rather than casual home decorators who will have the most impact on prices. One “decorator” turned collector is Jenny Wang Jinyuan, chairwoman of the Fosun Foundation and wife of Guo Guangchang, the billionaire co-founder of Chinese conglomerate Fosun International.

“I first became interested in collecting art when I visited other people’s offices and homes across the world and realised the possibilities of living with art,” she said in a panel discussion about collecting, held at the fair. Today, her main job is collecting art for the non-profit foundation, and that includes buying photographs.

“I began with watercolours and oil paintings. I only started buying photographs a few years ago. I like images backed by a good concept, such as works by Jiang Pengyi, whose ‘Everything Illuminates’ series are pictures of ordinary objects that deal with our search for light in life,” she told the audience.

There was a special exhibition at the fair that showed photos owned by well-known Chinese collectors. There, Wang revealed that she also owns pictures such as Eikoh Hosoe’s classic Ordeal by Roses No. 32 (1961) and French “guerilla” photographer JR’s JR At the Louvre, La Pyramide, 17 June 2016, 9.13 (2016).