Collecting contemporary visual art over the last twenty-five years has been defined by the high-profile, grand gesture that was largely played out in the auction houses, at the major art fairs, and in the press. The Japanese corporations in the 1980s were first out of the blocks buying up major Impressionist and post-Impressionist works for sums that brought about a collective gasp from the world; followed by the reign of Charles Saatchi, whose insatiable collecting habits brought artists to the public’s attention that are household names today; and the recent market has been dominated by the buying frenzy and excesses of hedge-fund managers and Russian oligarchs.

The acceleration in wealth that preceded the collapse of the financial markets saw a rise in the fortunes of a small number of artists and public institutions that are now haunted by the spectre of Bernie Madoff and his prey, and the empty desks and pockets at Lehman’s. This was an untimely and rude wake-up call for artists and arts institutions, signalling that they are also subject to the vagaries of economic forces that can orchestrate Damien Hirst picking up a cool £11 million in one night and then force him to lay off the majority of his workshop a couple of months later.

Global outrage has precipitated a call to embrace a new set of ethics and morality in relation to the market and economics. The art market has cooled off and the grand gesture is simply seen as bad manners in the current climate, with key collectors retreating from the limelight and contemporary visual art losing its trophy status. The big-game hunt is over.

Despite trouble at the top and the volatile backdrop of market crash and burn, creativity is thriving, with public institutions and funders becoming increasingly important in nurturing a new generation of artists, audiences, patrons and collectors. Accompanying this is a shift in the way we socialize, network and consume, through the rapid advancement of technology with artists and audiences responding quickly to the changes.

Contemporary photography has asserted itself as the medium for our changing times. It can shape-shift with ease between being the medium of great artworks to playing a significant role in the democratization of culture. Witness the numerous projects compelling audiences to take part in creating socially engaged artworks through uploading their own photography onto websites. I am a camera takes on a new meaning in the twenty-first century when the large majority of people have easy access to one through the mobile phone in their pocket.

New ways of collecting eschew the individual posturing of old to usher in collaborative models aligning with behavioural changes in other sectors, such as the crowdfunding of Franny Armstrong’s film The Age of Stupid and Obama’s successful electoral campaign, which relied on smaller financial contributions from many rather than a few wealthy individuals (After the Crunch, April 2009).

One such model is The Collective, which reconciles private ownership of artworks with the notions of sharing, trust, group contribution and decision-making. Set up five years ago, it consists of seven households making regular payments of £60 per month into a joint account. When enough money has accrued, a rotating panel decides on a new purchase and presents it to the group, with purchased work rotating across households. This model enables its members to share and enjoy works of contemporary art and tap into stimulating artistic scenes that have traditionally been open to more wealthy collectors.

Bringing together people with different tastes, knowledge, and expertise presented a challenge that was mitigated through regular contact with public institutions, attending openings and talks, and working with curators, who recommended purchases and created contacts with artists. Contemporary photography was an important catalyst for building the collection:

For us, photographs have been a key into collecting. They stimulated confidence to buy other media such as the recent live work by Katherine Fry. The photographs always stand out in our collection offering provocative imagery or discreet, inexplicable messages generated through the lens. – Tim Eastop, The Collective.

The Collective has recently been funded by Arts Council England to develop their unique model for wider use.

There has never been a more exciting or better time to build a collection of contemporary photography through affiliation with a reputable, public institution such as the Photographers’ Gallery in London. In order to nurture new collectors the Photographers’ Gallery has an online guide to collecting photography and membership offers benefits such as attending private views and access to talks and events.

A recent exhibition, freshfacedandwildeyed 09, showcased the breadth and dynamism of graduate and post-graduate photographic work, and a new collector could encounter the next generation of innovative and exciting artists. One such artist is Petros Chrisostomou, whose work Skatospore (II) (2008), is an image dominated by an exuberant bouquet made up of the tiniest, white straw fungi placed in a room reminiscent of a costume drama set, a grand ballroom – only on a Lilliputian scale. Another is Alexandra Hughes’s large abstract photographs of developing video stills, which use a Rothko palette combined with the poignant minimalism of Andy Warhol’s electric-chair series.

In the print-sales gallery the collector can receive expert advice and encounter work by more established artists, such as Andrew Cross, Ori Gersht, Chrystel Lebas, and Jason Oddy. These are works of exceptional quality, such as Andrew Cross’s series Some Trains in America, which has received critical acclaim and takes the viewer through a series of expansive images, on a road trip across America, evoking great American film imagery. Chrystel Lebas’s Blue Hour is a magical work that captures an endangered species, the bluebell and its resplendent, throbbing hum of colour. Jason Oddy’s Untitled, United Nations, New York is an empty space filled with the chatter of politics and power through the viewers mind.

Ori Gersht primarily works in moving image, and the Photographers’ Gallery commissioned an affordable limited-edition work, Untitled, from the Liquidation Series, as part of his solo exhibition. This is an important source of revenue for public galleries: the Whitechapel Gallery also has a number of limited editions, including a photographic work by multi-media artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Still from the Berlin Files, capturing a moment from a film that draws on the narrative conventions of detective novels and thrillers. It is a dark work that drags the viewer into a streetscape that feels both dangerous and glamorous. Another work that is not technically a photograph is a still from a video recording of a performative work by Marcus Coates, Radio Shaman, with Coates in the guise of a shaman, wearing an animal headdress, a recognizable motif in his work, against a backdrop of an ornate stained-glass window in Stavanger Cathedral, Norway. It is both surreal and fantastical image.

The Photographers’ Gallery and the Whitechapel Gallery can offer all of these artworks through Arts Council England’s Own Art scheme, designed to make it easy and affordable for everyone to buy contemporary works of art. You can borrow as much as £2,000 or as little as £100, and pay back the loan in ten monthly instalments – interest-free. The aim of the scheme is to encourage people to live with the art they love, inspire new collectors, and invest in artists.

Accompanying the scheme is a definitive guide to collecting contemporary art: Owning Art: The Contemporary Art Collector’s Handbook by Louisa Buck and Judith Greer. There is an invaluable section on collecting photography and describes photography as the medium and the memory of the modern age. It has an almost unrivalled reach and potency: it is everywhere and dominates everyone’s cultural life. A photograph can put the viewer in touch with the unknown, the long ago and the far away… Because the photograph is so freighted with cultural and philosophical issues, the collector of photography is placed at the heart of many of the key debates in today’s art.

Collecting contemporary art is at the heart of the visual arts ecology and a move away from the grand gesture has created an arena for new models of collecting and collectors. They do not live in The Phillimores and The Boltons, their business does not take them across five time zones, and they do not own shares in Gazprom or a football club. The new collector does not exist, floating face down in a pool, in an artwork by Elmgreen and Dragset at the 2009 Venice Biennale.

All hail the new collector, who is affiliated to public institutions with an understanding that a series of small investments, either with friends or through Own Art, can make a difference, build equity and endorsement for artists in a quieter way, through a multiplier effect and collective action. Working in the background to support the new collector is Arts Council England, through continued funding for artists and public institutions that are engaged in taking risks, encouraging new ideas and innovation, developing artistic practice and new markets for artists’ work