Wanted: Sugar daddy

So on this whole issue of printing and framing: How the hell do people pay for it? Is everyone a trust-fund kid? I mean, more power to you if you’ve got that kind of lineage. But if you’re not independently wealthy, how do you make it all work?

I’ve made the declaration here before that I’m only going to print and show my photographs in the sizes that I want, and that I’m going to have them professionally framed, because why skimp on the final stage of the process? Yeah, yeah . . . that’s all great in theory. But for an upcoming event, where I might be able to show about 10 images (maybe more, but 10 was a number I pulled out of thin air), I figured out that just the printing alone would cost me $750. And then the framing would, I have to imagine, be at least another $800 to $1,000. I’d love to be able to do this, and S. is saying go for it, you might as well, but S. isn’t the one on the line for my $30,000 credit-card debt or $40,000 student loan or $15,000 car loan. Sure, I have good credit, which means that the credit-card debt is only at 3.5 percent, the student loan is at 2.75 percent, and the car loan is at 0 percent, and I make more interest on my savings (such as it is) than I pay out on my debt. But still, that’s a lot of money to owe. And do I really need to be adding onto this with another couple grand? It’s not like I’m Zoe, who was almost able to pay off her $9,000 credit-card debt with the money she earned at her Silverstein show. (Go, Zoe!)

So I want to know: For those of you who are now relatively established (by that, I mean, you’ve got gallery representation, you’re regularly selling your work, you’re supporting yourself financially on your work in one way or another), how did you do it before you got to that point? And for those of you who are in the same boat I’m in (Ben, Shawn), how do you do it now—and how much debt, if any, are you willing to go into for this?