Digital BW, The Print

Anyway for the past couple of years I've been doing something a bit off the
wallŠ

Jim,

I am a firm believer in ³to each his own², (until it comes to trying to make
photographs look like paintings), but thought I would interject this food
for thought.
Have you ever seen this image?


That¹s uncle Ansel with his first interpretation of Moonrise along with a
later one. Believe me, the first one stinks.

What if Ansel had made that first interpretation a limited edition and
³retired² the negative afterwards? The Moonrise we all know and love would
never have existed at all!

This illustrates quite strongly why I am personally against limited
editions, canceling negatives, giving away negatives, etc., etc., etc.
In other words, all the things the art world would have us do by way of
making free gifts (for all practical purposes) of our best works, to the
speculators.
Burn our negatives just before we die? Sure. I¹m all for that. But doing
with our negatives what the (expletive deleted) art world would have us do
so that they can make a profit on our work, instead of us (the REAL reason),
is a very bad idea.

In printmaking, there is plenty of rationale for limited editions because
they are limited by the physical durability of the plate. The limited
edition is just the art world turning a defect into a ³feature². But the
photograph does not wear out and there is no rationale, save the false ones,
for limitations. 

Like the rest of us, including Ansel, you are only going to make at best, a
few dozen really good images in your lifetime. Why make a gift of them to
speculators while we spend our lives scratching for a living?

And BTW, you can bet your socks that after you cash in your chips, those
negatives will immediately be put into action by the people you gifted them
to! To borrow from Ansel, Œkeep the score, and keep performing it until you
have perfected that performance¹.



David Kachel

___________________

Artist-Photographer
Fine B&W Photographs

WEBSITE: www.davidkachel.com
BLOG: thetransparentphotographer.com
EMAIL: david@davidkachel.com

PO Box 173
Globe, AZ 85502
(928) 275-0925






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