Digital BW, The Print

Hi Mark,

I agree.  Once you set an edition number it should apply to all prints in all 
sizes made of that image.  I have been paying attention to this in galleries 
and shows for some time and have seen edition sizes from 10 to 950.  
Printing them all at once would obviously be ideal, as would a low numbered 
edition, from an art quality/collector point of view.  

As to galleries versus art fairs, well it depends.  Some galleries carry a lot of 
crap and some of the best high end art fairs have quite fine art.  In many of 
these art fairs there is a requirement that work be in limited editions, and 
some art fairs actually set a number (seems to be 250) limit on the editions.  I  
am going to try the high end art fair route this year (assuming I can get into a 
few of them).  This is driven partly by a need and desire to sell my work 
sooner rather than later, and a somewhat democratic desire to keep my 
prices low enough to sell to friends, colleagues and acquaintances (my 
current growing market), which I couldn't do if I were pricing to give 40-50% 
commission to a gallery.  I know you aspire to the high end of the art market 
and, judging by your work, you will probably find a good home there 
eventually.  My own landscape work may never find a similar home; it just 
doesn't fit into the contemporary urban art market anymore.  Only a few 
artists I know, such as Christopher Burkett and Robert Glenn Ketchum, have 
managed this with landscape photography that aspires something other than 
the conceptual.  My apologies for referring to color work on this forum!

Any way, to ramble on, the limited edition seems to be part of the art world 
as it is currently operating.  Your intellectual probes into these matters are 
quite stimulating.  It is fun to see you thrash all this (and your search for 
deep black) out in public and to read all the commentary that follows.  Peace.
And yes Frida was excellent.

Tom Andrews
http://www.wildlandart.com

 
> 
> There are buyers of photographs who base their decision to 
> purchase on the "investment factor", ie. what will this $500 print 
> be worth in ten years.
> 
> Your "contract" as you say above, is not worth the paper it's 
> written on if you can arbitrarily decide in three years to introduce 
> yet another edition of that same image.
> 
> When that buyer is standing there with checkbook in hand, 
> pondering the purchase, the buyer thinks at that point that only 
> 30, or 50 of these prints will ever be in circulation. How fair is it of 
> you to then decide later on, (after the image becomes popular), 
> that you're going to come out with a new 50-count Sepia Edition 
> in a smaller size? I say, quite unfair, and borderline sleazy.
> 
> Again, folks, you can't have it both ways. If you want respect, 
> you've gotta bring respect to the table. In the form of appropriate 
> and forthright business practices.
> 
> Just my opinion,
> 
> MT