Digital BW, The Print

(snip)
> 
> Matthew,
> 
> It doesn't matter how much work is put into a product in the 
> art market. 
> What did Whistler say in his suit aganst Ruskin?:
> 
> Ruskin's counsel: "The labour of two days & is that for which 
> you ask two 
> hundred guineas?" " Whistler: No. I ask it for the knowledge 
> of a lifetime. "
> 
>   It seems logical that silver prints will always lead newer methods 
> because of  decreasing supply.  Ink jet prints are an unknown 
> product right 
> now and the pricing is all over the place.  Would you pay as 
> much for one 
> as a silver print?
> 
> AZ


Alan,

Great quote! I completely agree with it and your comments. The $$ value of a
piece of art has nothing to do with the investment of time and material. It
sounds crass but ultimately it is worth what someone is willing to pay for
it. I don't see any reason to change pricing as I change medium. If someone
wants the print they will buy it.

Personally I don't do limited editions. David Vestal wrote in his column a
few years back about the issue. He surveyed a number of photographers asking
if they did editions and how many copies of each print they typically made.
Interestingly the photographers who did not make editions tended to make
fewer copies.

I think the vision of the average photographer churning out 100's copies of
a print from their Epson 1280 are a myth. I would guess that most work like
I do. You scan, work in Photoshop, make work prints and when you think you
have it right, you make a few finished prints. If it is an average print
maybe you do 2 or 3 copies. If it's a favorite you might do 5 or 6. Paper,
ink, time and storage space are valuable and I am not inclined to waste
them.

So let's say you are fortunate enough to sell those original prints and it
is now sometime in the future. Are you going to pull up the file and just
bang out another print? For myself I doubt it. First of all I may have moved
on to a new printer, inks, paper, etc. or I may want to do something
slightly different with the rendition of the image. So what you would get
over time is a series of prints of the same image that were printed in small
batches with batch-to-batch variation. This is not unlike what happens with
traditional B&W printing.

There is a very successful wildlife photographer, whose name escapes me at
the moment, but I remember walking through his gallery and the prints were
numbered edition prints. Unfortunately they were numbered something like
"#1381 of 2500". He also produces separate editions of each size as do other
photographers. To me editioning does not imply a lack of mass production.

I remember showing Morley Baer my portfolio which was all 11x14 prints. He
commented that he really liked that size and had printed a limited edition
of his most popular prints on 11x14 (Morley shot 8x10 and generally sold
un-editioned contact prints). He said he really regretted doing that limited
edition as the prints were extremely popular and sold out really quickly.

If you do achieve fame and fortune as an art photographer, editioning may
come back to haunt as some earlier image becomes very popular and you can't
make anymore copies for sale, or you will have to resort to printing a "new"
edition with some variation such a portfolio set or a different size. While
editioning has a certain panache, it doesn't make the art any better and I
think that overall it may do the artist more harm than good.

Martin Wesley
http://www.carolyn.cc/Guests/MartinWesley/pages/MW_01.html
http://www.borderless-photos.de/guests.html