“And as Susan Kismaric, curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, wryly observed, "Large color photographs decorate; small black-and-white photographs don't decorate." “
Thanks for that llnk, Isaac, it says petty much all there is to say about the 'value' of art.
Regarding the way an individual photographer should or should not work – that's a sort of crazy idea to begin with: you work (or should work) as your spirit moves you, and if it doesn't you're in the wrong hobby.
If you are good enough to do it professionally, then you have to decide if you want to be a GP or a specialist. In my view, specialists get the better deal if they can beat the opposition, otherwise they plough a lonely and probably poor furrow.
Being a professional 'art' photographer, on the other hand, strikes me as a paradox at best and a most doubtful way in which to attempt to earn a living. I believe that far fewer so-termed art photographers make it than commercial photographers. (Of course, should you already be independently wealthy, then that's immaterial to you.) Perhaps the greatest stumbling block for the 'professional' art photographer is deciding what to shoot – he puts himself into the position where there's no client asking him to complete a specific brief. So now he has to invent one for a person he doesn't even know?
In my view, if you are/were already a successful, top-tier commercial photographer, such as Bailey, Newton, Klein, Watson etc. etc. then your work gets picked up on by the galleries and you are on your way with a secondary career whilst still happily mining the commercial mother lode.
Regarding websites: if you are still doing commercial photography, I think you should keep your site limited to commercial work, in order to save clients-to-be time, and also to give them a concentrated taste of what you are about. The same, perhaps, holds for the photographer hoping to sell art prints; show what you hope to sell. If you do both, you need two sites. Unless, again, you are already world-famous.
In a situation where photography becomes or always was but a pastime, put whatever the hell you want to put into your website. It's there to please you and nobody else. That's precisely why my own is split into the sections that it is: the first gallery shows my old pro work, the rest being a vague divide into different genres that interested me at the time of following them. Better yet, having these things on one site saves me the bother of searching through external HDs etc. for pictures I have probably forgotten that I made, and offers me the interesting possibility of having a quick overview of where my own spirit or desire has led me through the past few years. It's not only quite gratifying, but also somewhat enlightening for me to realise the various moods etc. that have consumed me, that felt so important at the time, but become nothing more than temporary places my mind has inhabited.
Try to keep photography fun for yourself, and ignore the gallery stars: their fame and glory are built not even on sand but upon stardust.
Rob C