During my recent visit to Sydney I popped into one of my favourite hangouts, the Art Gallery of NSW and headed straight down to the photographic exhibitions (why do galleries always bury photography exhibits in the basement?). I was surprised to find a number of pieces by Andreas Gursky, whose name didn’t mean much to me until a few years back when one of his photographs sold for over three million dollars. 

While contemplating the huge print of “Chicago, Mercantile Exchange” (it was estimated to sell for over five hundred thousand Euros), I got to thinking about the first time I presented my photography to the owner of the Red Square Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa. I now cringe at the thought of how naive I was; I just arrived at the gallery without an appointment, my work was very poorly presented and was very higgledy-piggledy to say the least with no structure or cohesive theme. The gallery owner was very polite in rejecting me but it took me ages to come to terms with it. So how do you go from aspiring artist to commercial success? 

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