What Is Selling Out?

Have been having a interesting email discussion with a photography friend. The discussion is about getting your work into a gallery and when your selling out and when your not.

Friend

I don't think the term "selling out" is accurate here.
To submit work that is best suited to the venue to which you are submitting...
with the intention being to gain some exposure and credibility...
so that you can later promote your best work elsewhere...
This is not selling out.

It is marketing and being intelligent.
It is using an opportunity at hand as a stepping stone to where you want to be.
I hardly see this as a sellout.

My Reply

I think the definition of selling out is if you compromise what you want to do so that you can benefit from exposure the gallery gives you. If you do work you do not want to do that you do not think is important just to get the show, that's a sell out. Once you head down that road I am not sure you can get back on the right track. You would get the shows onto your CV but then can you get back to your own individual artististic vision? Or have you compromised that away? I am not sure the end justifies the means here.

The worst thing you can do as an artist is to not try and tell your own story. The great thing about art is that if its done well your telling people a story that is your vision of the world, once you sacrifice that vision, sacrifice that independent thought you become less of an individual artist and lose that spark that makes you different, then as a result your work becomes mediocre and forgettable.

I am not sure how far down the compromise road you have to go before damage is done, but my theory is its best to stay as far away from it as you can. The shows are secondary to the work anyway, the work if its strong will eventually get shown, maybe it will not happen till after your death but strong work survives, history shows that.