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Valuable PR materials
Jacqueline,
I'm concerned about your mention of misplacing important photos. Photos such as those you mentioned which were misplaced are a valuable record of an artist's career and potentially great PR material in the future. When I managed a portrait artist, I took all past PR materials (from before my tenure), put them in chronological order, with the most recent first and created a PR book which was a leatherette, 3-ring binder with plastic page protectors.
Once created, I kept this PR book up to date on a regular basis. Whenever we had an exhibition, the PR book was always on a table close by for attendees to peruse. Seeing the artist's history in this book brought a lot of credibility and provided easy conversation starters.
I would also often copy recent sections of the PR book and send out with press releases to provide additional material that might catch the recipient's attention.
The PR book (which actually grew to 4 books) contained such things as:
1. Newspaper articles where he was either the main feature or where he was mentioned.
2. PR photos taken at an event.
Even if your participation in an event is never published, you can still create a story for a PR book.
For example, we attended a fund raiser for the Young Musician's Foundation in LA. We were invited by Shelley Conti, the wife of Bill Conti who won an Oscar fo the soundtrack of the movie Rocky. It just so happened that at that time, George Peppard was Bill's best friend (George is now deceased). I managed to get snapshots of the artist with Bill Conti and with George Peppard. Though our attendance at the event was never published anywhere, I created a story with these photos. At the event, I shot the artist next to the event's main large banner, giving a title to the event story and then assembled the photos with captions.
Another example of creating a story was when the artist painted a portrait of George Washington offering a quill to the viewer, inviting them to sign the constitution as part of the Bicentennial Celebration. When this painting was exhibited at Disneyworld, again I took photos of the event and make a story in the PR book. I included our name tags which had Mickey Mouse on them and the printed program where he and the painting were mentioned.
Even if you don't manage to get photos of an event, you can still include the printed program, highlighting any mention in the program of the artist.
3. Anything related to the artist that had been in print.
When one of his portraits was used for the cover of a Chick Corea album, I color copied and reduced the album cover and included it in the book with a caption.
4. Special projects.
When the artist was commissioned to do a painting for the annual Donaulinselfest (Danube Island Festival) in Austria, I created a story behind the painting by photographing him photographing Vienna's mayor and a famouse Austrian rock star, both of whom were to be in the painting. One of the photos ended up in the Vienna newspaper, which I clipped, of course, and included in the PR book also.
PR and an historical record of an artist's career is an often overlooked aspect of an artist's career and wanted to mention it here for you and for anyone who is serious about their career.
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