The story behind the picture — how to present an artwork so people stop

A picture without a story is decoration

Someone scrolling past your work decides in a second whether it is theirs. In that second they see colour and form — and nothing of what it cost you, where it happened, or why it looks the way it does.

Decoration is compared by price and by whether it fits the sofa. A work with a story is not compared at all, because there is only one of it.

What a buyer actually takes home

Think of the last time someone showed you a picture on their wall. They did not say “acrylic on canvas, 60 by 80”. They said where they found it, who made it, and what the artist told them.

That sentence is what they bought. The picture is how they keep it. If you do not give them the sentence, they have nothing to retell — and a work nobody talks about does not travel.

Show it, do not write it

You can write the story under the image, and you should. But a text is read by the few who were already interested. A face is watched by almost everyone.

Above you see Gerry Louisett next to his Living Poster “Gina”, from 2015. He stands beside the work, phone in his hand, and talks about it. No studio, no script on a screen, no editing. It is the artist and the picture in the same frame — and that is the whole idea.

What to say in that minute

One work, one story. Where were you when it started? What went wrong on the way? What should I look for that I would miss on my own? Pick one of these, not all three.

Leave out your CV, your exhibitions and the list of techniques. They belong on your profile. In front of the picture people want to hear the thing you would tell a friend who asks: “and this one?”

How to film it

Hold the phone upright. Stand next to the work, not in front of it, so both of you are in the picture. Use daylight from a window and turn off the music in the room.

Keep it under a minute and do it in one take. If you stumble, leave it in — a person who searches for a word is believed sooner than one who recites. Do three takes and keep the one where you forgot the camera.

Connect every artwork with your video

A video that lives only on your phone or somewhere in a feed is gone tomorrow. It has to hang on the work itself — so that whoever stands in front of the picture finds the story, today and in three years.

That is what a Living Poster does. The printed poster carries a QR code; scan it and the film starts, with music, next to the work. On lakatosbandi.com every poster also has its own page, and the film has its own address on it — one link you can send, post or put under an ad, and it opens exactly there.

Start with one work. Film the story, hang it on the picture, send the link to five people who know you. Then do the next one.

Offer the work as a poster — you can sell it more than once

An original can be sold exactly once. After that the work you put weeks into earns you nothing more, however many people would have loved it on their wall.

A poster of it can be sold again and again. For every poster of yours we sell, you get 10 € — added on top of our price, not taken out of yours. The original stays yours the whole time and can still be sold as what it is: the only one.

So it is not poster instead of original. It is the original, plus every poster that finds a wall. In the end that is more than the single sale — and many more people live with your picture than one buyer ever could.

We help you present it

You do not have to build any of this yourself. On lakatosbandi.com your work becomes a Living Poster: the sheet with your title and your sentence, the rooms it hangs in, the QR code, the page of its own that you can share — and your film on it.

You bring the work and the minute in front of the camera. We take care of how it is shown, printed and delivered. You decide work by work what may become a poster, and you can take it back at any time.