Digital BW, The Print

djon43 wrote:
> People familiar with the breadth of Weston's and Adams' work know that
> dry mounted prints are worth less (market price) than unmounted prints
> (all photographs are worth less when dry mounted), and that they've
> yellowed heavily. 
>   
You must be joking. That's certainly not the case at AIPAD shows, full 
of dealers who know Adams and Weston inside out. I've never seen a 
yellowed dry mounted print from either artist at AIPAD, nor in any of 
the gallery and museum shows I've attended. A lot of Adams and Weston 
shows over the last 30 years.

And it's not my experience that you can see any kind of price 
differential between mounted and unmounted prints. Certainly not at 
AIPAD. And not at my local photography art dealer either.
> While I love those old yellowed Westons far more than anything Adams
> did, mounted or unmounted, they're heavily and "unacceptably" yellowed
> in modern "archival" parlance.
>
> Museums HATE dry mounting. Ask a curator, this is not news.
>   
I have. While not fond of dry mounting because it's not reversible, they 
seem accepting because they recognize that it's just about the only way 
to make a gelatin coated print lay flat and frame well. "Hate" is way 
too strong a word to describe how curators feel. Some curators even like 
dry mounting because it seals the back of the print from atmospheric 
contamination.

To be sure, dry mounting can be badly done. But photographers who know 
what they are doing seldom screw it up.
> They do display dry mounted prints by photographers they consider
> significant, but dry mounting emphasizes "hobbiest" and "not serious"
> otherwise. County fairs and "art shows" have no difficulty with dry
> mounting, of course. 
>   
Now that's just your own particular prejudices showing.

Now for the record, I don't dry mount any of my own work. That's because 
I no longer make silver gelatin prints and my inkjet prints stay flat 
enough and frame well enough with out it. And... I don't have the room 
for a dry mounting press anyway.
--
Bruce Watson