The Art Angle Podcast: The Rise and Fall of Anne Geddes, Queen of Baby Photography

Welcome to the Art Angle, a podcast from Artnet News that
delves into the places where the art world meets the real world,
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experts in the field.

Picture this: a doughy, apple-cheeked infant nestled in between
the soft petals of a dew-kissed flower, sound asleep, like the
start of a real-life fable. Almost everyone who conjures that
mental image will do so using a nearly identical aesthetic—and
whether you realize it or not, that’s almost entirely because of
the work of legendary baby photographer Anne Geddes.

After her debut photography book, Down in the
Garden, soared to number three on the New York Times
Bestseller list in 1996, Geddes’s wholesomely surreal infant images
became inescapable. Oprah went on air to declare Down in the
Garden the best coffee-table book she’d ever seen, and by
late December 1997, Geddes’s publishing partners had sold more than 1.8 billion (yes, with a
“b”) calendars and date books of her photography for the upcoming
year. Her dizzying success soon spurred the artist to ramp up
production, with a standard Geddes shoot requiring six-to-eight
months of planning and a budget between $250,000 and $350,000. But
who could blame her for going big? Geddes’s empire of adorable
infants seemed unstoppable.

Cut to 2020, however, and the picture has changed
dramatically—not just for Geddes, but for an entire creative
economy driven by analog photography, print publishing, and the
high barriers to entry formerly associated with both. Years after
smartphones first began putting increasingly high-quality cameras
in nearly everyone’s pocket, and Instagram began providing masses
of self-trained shutterbugs a free and wide-reaching distribution
platform for their images, it’s not hyperbole to say that the
pillars on which Geddes built her career have crumbled. So
what’s the Queen of Baby Photography to do when her kingdom becomes
unrecognizable?

In this week’s episode, Andrew Goldstein chats with Noor Brara,
Artnet’s art and design editor, about her recent profile of Geddes.
Together, they discuss the artist’s rise, fall, and reckoning with
culture’s digital evolution.

Listen above and subscribe to the Art Angle on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, or wherever you get your podcasts. (Or
catch up on past episodes here on Artnet News.)

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