Today we’d like to introduce you to Esteban Pulido.
Hi Esteban, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I started Los Angeles Print Shop almost by accident. I’m a photographer and have been since 2004 and hold an MFA from the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago. My work is large format photographs that range from 8×10 inch to 48×60 inch prints that I make myself here at my shop.
Clarity and detail in an image are crucial in my own photography, and printing my own work made it possible to bring that out to the surface of a photograph. So that when a person looks at one of my images up on a wall, they see the fibers of a person’s clothes, they see the detail of a day’s work on a person’s face. They see all of the details of a person that they would only be able to see if they knew that person well. The precise technical execution of a print is crucial for my art.
In addition to making work for myself, I started printing work for my friends who didn’t have a large format printer and no longer had access to school printers post-graduation. These printers are not cheap or easy to learn — but I had one and was happy to make the resource accessible.
So, I thought I was simply making prints for friends — and making available the equipment and technical expertise I had — until I saw that I was making lots of prints for friends and realized that there was a business here. I also saw that I had a path forward to making large-format printing even more accessible by creating a pay-what-you-can pricing model for prints.
I was motivated and inspired to make museum-quality prints an option for anyone, particularly underrepresented and emerging artists who might otherwise might not make their art: The artists who take beautiful photographs but because they don’t print them large enough or at high enough quality don’t land gallery shows. The artists who are locked out of the art world before they even start simply because they’re not already well-known, or white, or most importantly because they aren’t wealthy. At Los Angeles Print Shop, we believe the gate of wealth and technical know-how shouldn’t keep people from making images.
Now, my wife works with me in the shop on operations and marketing (former head of content at Groupon) and so does my daughter, who makes imaginary prints on her table next to mine.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Yes, Los Angeles welcomed me with open arms as an artist and as a print shop. There is an outstanding community of artists in Los Angeles who are so supportive of one another. The artists here have a sense that anything they want to make is possible and they should make it!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Los Angeles Print Shop meticulously makes large-format fine art digital prints for artists. The prints we make go on to hang in galleries and museums in the US and internationally. Our clients are underserved artists, people of color, women, and emerging artists. Via our pay-what-you-can pricing model, we are helping to solve the $192 Billion dollar gender gap in art — of the $196 Billion dollars spent at art auctions between 2008 and 2019, only 2% of it was spent on work by women (Topaz, 2022) — and the racial disparity — during the same time, only 7.7% of commercial gallery exhibitions focused on work by Black artists (Halperin and Burns, 2019). At Los Angeles Print Shop, we believe that these disparities begin early on in artists’ careers when they do not have access to the equipment or technical expertise at a price they can afford to make museum-quality work.
We make it possible for artists to make art who would otherwise not have the tools or technical ability to take their ideas from their mind or camera into physical form.
There are so many barriers to making art. What starts as a very wide funnel narrows tremendously: Everyone has access to cameras. A lot of people have something interesting that they want to say and could say it with a camera. How many people take the photo? How many people have the skill to take the photo they intend to? And finally, how many people have the ability and access to take that photo and turn it into an art object?
What’s more, the funnel narrows most dramatically for underrepresented groups: women, people of color and artists without generational wealth.
Los Angeles Print Shop connects with the artists in Los Angeles and the greater community of photographers to make it possible for them to print museum-quality fine art photographs at large scale. This opens doors for them to have their work in galleries, art shows, museums, and private collections. It is the difference between making more art and quitting art altogether.
I am most proud of the impact Los Angeles Print Shop has on the work and careers of living artists.
One international artist we printed for this year did not have access to large-format printing equipment. Even going to the labs available, the prints are sub-par technically. We’ve built a print pipeline where he sends me his art, and I make his prints. I’ve spent time getting to know him and how he makes art and have been making his prints for international gallery shows.
Another client, an emerging Los Angeles artist and recent graduate with their BFA in art got an invitation to be part of a two-person gallery show in Mexico City — this is a turning point in an artist’s career. But they did not have the funds to pay full price for their prints. They were planning to decline the show. Then they found the Los Angeles Print Shop. Our pay-what-you-can pricing made it possible for them to print and show in this career-defining moment.
In turn, we ask more established artists to pay what they can — and they do. We’re interested in equitable access and so are the other artists in our community. They know that each full-price or above-market print they make enables an emerging or underrepresented artist to make a print.
It brings me joy to know that art that might otherwise go unmade is being made, shown in galleries, and loved by people around the world.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
There will always be a human desire to look. No matter what, as long as humans exist, they will want to look at prints. We will forever be making these objects.
I can only imagine what photography will be like in the far future, but in the near future there might be new technologies or old technologies that will be in vogue, but the human desire to look will still be there. Artists will still be making those prints, and I’ll be helping them.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://printshop.la/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/losangelesprintshop
