All things change over time, and someday, my street photos will become much more valuable, even though most are not strictly documentary images.
I have no doubts that my photos are already valuable. After all, I’ve already sold some of them to Poland (10 images), USA (9 photos), and England (4 photographs). It is an excellent moment to stress that all these sold pictures were one of a kind: I will never develop them again. They are unique because no other copy will ever appear. I am the one who is responsible for it, and I know that if I want something to be precious and valuable, I have to make it only one of a kind.
In the same way, Taschen makes a limited collection of books (e.g., with the photographers’ autographs).
I create thousands of pictures yearly. For some people, such an amount may seem as unreasonable. They could say the more pictures, the lesser their value. I would disagree with them. How do I know it? I recommend studying biographies of such artists as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Klee, Salvador Dali, or Zdzislaw Beksinski. They produced thousands of works of art. I want to leave behind something profound. These will be not only my texts but also tens of thousands of images taken mainly on Warsaw’s streets between 2015-2024 (I wrote this text on the 4th of February, 2024; I hope I will manage to do street photography for the next sixty years until I will be one hundred years old).
Undoubtedly, one hundred years after my death, my pictures will be recognized not only due to their artistic charm but also their documentary properties. Even though most of them are hard to define as documentaries, I have no doubts they will present a reality already gone for future generations. Also, they will be much more valuable.
