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The Value of a Fine Print?
I must admit I'm pretty tired of the standard digital vs traditional debate. I find the conversation typically centers around print quality. Which process produces the largest range of tone, most permanent image, deepest black, brightest white, most detail, sharpness, etc. Personally I find that both traditional and digital processes can produce excellent images.
There is one aspect of this debate that I don't often see discussed. I find it to be one of the most striking differences between the two methods. Traditional wet darkroom prints are unique hand crafted one of a kind works, typically created from exposure to print by the artist. The traditional photographer may strive for consistency from print to print, but in the end each print is a one of a kind creation. A digital print does not have this unique quality. The same digital file can be used to print a cheap poster or make a fine inkjet print on Ilford Galerie Gold Fibre Silk, you can even email it to a printer and receive a "fine art print" in the mail.
Does the uniqueness of a traditional print and the process itself add substantial value to the work, or do you find that the quality and content of the image overides the method of creation? Is the medium an image is created in only a means used to deliver a photographer/artist's vision?
I am struggling with this topic in relation to my own work, especially considering some of the recent advances in digital and printing technology. Your thoughts would be appreciated.
-=Will
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
You are going to find the answers falling into two camps...depending in large part on what the respondant believes...not any of the answers will be objective. Collectors of photographic art will be divided too.
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When the medium becomes the message ...
http://www.jmcolberg.com/weblog/2008...es_the_me.html
This pretty much sums up for me how I feel about this whole argument.
Darr
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
willwilson
....Does the uniqueness of a traditional print and the process itself add substantial value to the work, or do you find that the quality and content of the image overides the method of creation?
-=Will
My small-ish photograph collection is worth over $10,000, I guess. All are either silver or platinum prints made by the photographer from LF cameras/film. These are the basic criteria I go from when considering buying. Call me crazy but I want the printer of the art I buy to be a human - not a machine (i.e. Epson, HP). And that human must be the artist himself/herself.
So yes, to me the hand crafted b&w print merits my hard earned money. I refuse to spend a dime on something that`s spit out of a machine. Hand-made, yes. Machine-made, no.
OTOH, I can (and do) appreciate a good eye - whether digital or traditional - when I look at magazines, web sites, books, etc. but I do not wish to partake with my cash for work not meeting my basic "standards".
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
If the craftsman has printed the print with the same time, same paper, same developing... Then the only differences in the prints will be in the coatings and imperfections of the paper. This is the part of photography that I consider the craft rather than the art. I don't mean that in a derogatory way by any means, but truly mean it with great respect towards those who have developed this skill.
I'm not really clear on how this differs from digital, where the same could be said about choosing the same paper for each print and using the correct profile and it just coming down to paper imperfections that create the uniqueness of an image. Granted, with digital I could have multiple printers running the same image simultaneously, where a single person in a darkroom can only realistically make one print at a time. But there are practical constraints to quantity in both methods and artificial constraints can also be applied to both methods of printing.
Granted, preparing an image in photoshop for printing is not the same thing as testing and printing in the traditional darkroom, but I would hope that a printer (of the human sort) would strive for consistency once the right formula has been determined.
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Daniel Grenier
So yes, to me the hand crafted b&w print merits my hard earned money. I refuse to spend a dime on something that`s spit out of a machine. Hand-made, yes. Machine-made, no.
Isn't the camera a machine too?
No one can argue with where you are willing to spend your money and it is fine to have the criteria you have set for yourself, but I think the whole machine argument is a slippery slope.
Unless you are in the darkroom with the artist how do you know who made the wet print, the artist or the darkroom assistant?
I would tend to be more in Darr's camp on this one. I appreciate all photography when it is done well.
jb
www.timeandlight.com
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Does the uniqueness of a traditional print and the process itself add substantial value to the work, or do you find that the quality and content of the image overides the method of creation? Is the medium an image is created in only a means used to deliver a photographer/artist's vision?
-=Will[/QUOTE]
This is a question that only you can answer. What value do you place on your work?
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
To me, the difference is that the silver print is an actual product of the interaction of light and chemistry, fixed within a matrix. Whereas, regardless of the relative esthetic merits of a machine (inkjet, sublimation etc.) prints, the process that creates the print is unrelated to the interaction of light and chemistry. The inkjet is a virtual representation of the interaction of light and sensors on the camera sensor, whereas a silver print is the direct artifact of the photographic process itself.
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
I thought I had an opinion on this subject but now I have flip-flopped twice already today. So I'll just keep reading all of yours.
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Toyon, I print using a LightJet printer, well not me actually, but prints are "spat" out of LightJet printer or machine if you will. It prints on true photo sensitive papers by using lasers, and then processed with RA-4 chemistry. This is certainly an interaction on the paper with light and chemistry, is it not?
Adam
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Adam Kavalunas
Toyon, I print using a LightJet printer, well not me actually, but prints are "spat" out of LightJet printer or machine if you will. It prints on true photo sensitive papers by using lasers, and then processed with RA-4 chemistry. This is certainly an interaction on the paper with light and chemistry, is it not?
Adam
I agree, it is.
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
What if you are able to make wet darkroom prints with such consistency that they are identical? I know that is what edition printers for limited edition books strive for, and to my eye, they succeed.
By your logic, any print that cannot be distinguished from its identical copy would lose this important 'unique, hand-made' quality that you assert may add value to the resulting print. In short, I am not sure one of the implicit premises to the argument at the beginning of this thread is valid. I think even a silver gelatin print can fail to have this 'one-of-a-kind, unique' quality if the skill of the photographer is sufficient.
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
I've seen lots of "handmade" prints (by LF and ULF toggers, no less) that bored the hell out of me. Would they be more valuable than the stimulating inkjet prints I have in my collection? :confused:
If we're going to be purists, I suggest that only photographers who create their own emulsions and coat their own plates and papers are "handmaking" their work. After all, an enlarger is a machine and there's no real craft in buying the same box of machine-made paper as everyone else :eek:
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Quote:
If the craftsman has printed the print with the same time, same paper, same developing... Then the only differences in the prints will be in the coatings and imperfections of the paper. This is the part of photography that I consider the craft rather than the art. I don't mean that in a derogatory way by any means, but truly mean it with great respect towards those who have developed this skill.
I can't agree with this particular point at all and it is this very point that to me seperates the potential value between traditional and digital printing.
It is almost impossible to produce the perfect negative and as a result prints produced by the more traditional methods such as silver/gelatine will require a lot of work before a final satisfactory image is produced. This work...dodging, burning, pre-flashing, bleaching, toning etc. is virtually impossible to reproduce precisely print to print. Dodging and burning are particularly difficult to replicate. These adjustments in the traditional printing process can take some considerable time and have to be done for each and every print and the resulting slight variations mean that every print is unique. A limited edition of say 50 prints will take a considerable amount of time and effort to produce.
This is even more so in areas such as pt/pl printing where each sheet of hand made paper will have subtle, or possible not so subtle differences. One cannot ignore the material cost of these printing methods either.
Contrast the above with the digital process, whilst it can be admitted that a lot of skill, experience and time may be required to produce a print of "exhibition" or "collector" quality it is then only a matter of outputting to a printer whatever edition size you choose while you pop off to the nearest pub for a beer or two. When you return you will be greeted by a neat pile of identical electro-mechanically produced prints. Save the file and next week you can knock off another hundred or two virtually without any effort at all.
I am in no way intending to say that one process is better at producing a beautiful print than the other, just, that in terms of putting a value on an individual image, the fact that a traditionally made print is unique and a lot of effort has been put into it's production should result in a higher value.
Cheers
Martin
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Daniel Grenier
I refuse to spend a dime on something that`s spit out of a machine. Hand-made, yes. Machine-made, no.
Then you can't buy any photographs regardless of print method. All production cameras are made with machines. Certainly lenses are impossible without machines. All decent film is made with machines. Nearly all production papers are made with machines. Harmon uses the same paper coating lines to make both photo papers and inkjet papers -- it's just a matter of what coating to lay down.
Photography is machine based; it would take an amazing amount of effort taking hundreds if not thousands of learning curves to do it all without machines of some kind or other, and the results would be highly inferior unless you really like defects (pin hole photographs on wavy hand-made hand-coated glass plates, printed on hand made hand coated papers, etc.).
But if that's what you want, more power to ya. Let us know if you find a photographer working completely sans machines. I would find that genuinely interesting and would like to see some of the results.
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
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Originally Posted by
clay harmon
I think even a silver gelatin print can fail to have this 'one-of-a-kind, unique' quality if the skill of the photographer is sufficient.
I agree with you that with enough darkroom skill print to print differences can be almost totally eliminated, but this does not mean each silver print is not a separate work generated by the artist.
It's not the amount of variance between prints that makes it more or less unique. It's the actual process. If an oil painter had sufficient skill to produce two paintings that were indistinguishable from each other; it would not make either of those pieces stand less on their own. For instance, if Mark Rothko had decided to paint 20 identical versions of "WHITE CENTER (YELLOW, PINK AND LAVENDER ON ROSE)" they would be visually similar but they would still be separate works by the artist, as opposed to additional copies of one work(however well done) where the print button was clicked repeatedly. They might not all sell for $72,840,000 but I bet they wouldn't be treated as copies either.
I don't necessarily think this takes away from value of digital photographic work but I do feel that the digital printing process has a tendency to turn prints into more of a product of the original singular artistic work and less of an artistic effort in and of itself. If technology advances far enough electronically displayed digital images could surpass the quality of digital prints on paper. Would you then sell your prints in limited edition downloads?
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
My own feelings run very much along the lines you described here. In my mind, the hand made print is the end result of the direct efforts of it's creator, and as such is the work itself and not a reproduction. I don't care how the idea was achieved, or where, but I do care if what I am considering purchasing is a direct product of the artist or a reproduction of their efforts. Materials or methods are of no real concern - I don't care that film and camera were made using machines any more than I can if the paint and brushes that a painter used was, but I do care if a machine made the strokes rather than the hand of the artist.
If the physical product generated from the original effort is not a consideration, why are high quality reproductions of powerful or moving paintings of less value than the originals? They show the same image that is shown by the original product of effort, so what else is different?
- Randy
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Piffel! (Piffle! if you're British.)
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
It's funny. In a previous life, I spent almost 20 years in the Oriental Rug business. I must have gone over the differences between machine made and hand-knotted rugs 10K times. And in my mind the differences are much the same between the two mediums.
A machine made rug can be of exceptional quality. Karastan comes to mind; a fiendishly complicated axminster weave, done on machine in Eden North Carolina. Takes 6 hours to make 2 9x12 sized rugs. Lasts for 60 years, at least. Great rugs. Fairly expensive. Takes a lot of human labor just to get the mill set up to make a run. Lots of people like them for both aesthetics as well as functionality. Most machine made rugs, though, are lower quality, spit off the machine wilton weaves. Low cost, low functionality. Almost, well, disposable. Certainly not considered works of art.
A hand-knotted rug can also be low or high quality. A Karastan is better than a low quality handknotted, for example. But when you see a fine Isphahan or Tabriz, woven with silk and wool, taking upwards of 3 to 4 years to make a single carpet, well, that's art. And don't even get me started on a Fine Qum.
I think the thing is; being hand made does not necessarily make it art. There needs to be an intrinsic value as regards durability, reliability, etc. as well as sincere effort to create.
But Machines don't make art. They make stuff you walk on for a while, then throw away.
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
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Originally Posted by
Blueberrydesk
It's funny. In a previous life, I spent almost 20 years in the Oriental Rug business. I must have gone over the differences between machine made and hand-knotted rugs 10K times. And in my mind the differences are much the same between the two mediums.
A machine made rug can be of exceptional quality. Karastan comes to mind; a fiendishly complicated axminster weave, done on machine in Eden North Carolina. Takes 6 hours to make 2 9x12 sized rugs. Lasts for 60 years, at least. Great rugs. Fairly expensive. Takes a lot of human labor just to get the mill set up to make a run. Lots of people like them for both aesthetics as well as functionality. Most machine made rugs, though, are lower quality, spit off the machine wilton weaves. Low cost, low functionality. Almost, well, disposable. Certainly not considered works of art.
A hand-knotted rug can also be low or high quality. A Karastan is better than a low quality handknotted, for example. But when you see a fine Isphahan or Tabriz, woven with silk and wool, taking upwards of 3 to 4 years to make a single carpet, well, that's art. And don't even get me started on a Fine Qum.
I think the thing is; being hand made does not necessarily make it art. There needs to be an intrinsic value as regards durability, reliability, etc. as well as sincere effort to create.
But Machines don't make art. They make stuff you walk on for a while, then throw away.
Beautifully expressed, Paul.
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Allow me to step on myself here! :)
The value of a hand made print is of primary importance (or "value" in this case) to two people---
1)The photographer who made the print because that is the way
"a" photographer really wants to produce "this" photograph.
2) The viewer who appreciates the manual effort put out by the artist in working by hand to produce "this" particular photograph.
If either the artist or the viewer doesn't value that reality, then that particular value isn't of any greater value than any other form of printing.
Should this be of any great concern? Well, yes and no. For the hand printer, "yes" because printing using conventional methods is an act of intimacy IMHO, more so than a manipulation using machines that are far more complex than a simple enlarger or contact frame.
For the viewer, most likely "no" unless there is some "connection" with the photographer or the time when the photograph was crafted and it means something to the viewer that the artist "made" the print with his or her own hands. If the value of an image is based solely on content and not a personal connection or appreciation then there would not be any added value from being a hand made print that I can see.
My opinion and it's worth just about what you paid me for it! :D
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Perhaps a little light reading before bedtime:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/su...e/benjamin.htm
I still think this whole argument revolves around speciously setting up a straw man to attack. The original proposition presents what in many cases is a distinction without a difference. If you can't tell one photographic print from another, what makes it unique other than this purported 'spirit of hand work' that supposedly inhabits the interstices of the paper fibers?
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
How do you value your own work and which price do you put on it? Does it match the price levels of potential buyers/viewers?
My first LF exhibition ended a few days ago and my b&w photographs are now safe at my home. The photographs were not for sale...why?
Because they were made in my wet darkroom and I spent too much time 'creating' them until they satisfied my vision to just sell them off. I also realized they all became a part of a larger context that would be lost if half of them were to 'disappear'.
However, I also had three photographs printed digitally on canvas in size 80x100cm. They cost me a fortune to have printed by a professional lab and they were for sale.
So what was the difference? To reproduce a digital print is only a matter of money to me. If someone pays I can go print. To reproduce a b&w wet darkroom photograph is another matter as it involves so many steps, all being subject to different challenges of consistency in paper, chemistry, temperature, accuracy in focusing, removing dust, paper handling, etc... and most challenging of all - FINDING THE SPARE TIME TO DO IT!
It's not that I have a lot of money, I just do not photograph to survive physically.
So what is really the value of a photograph? The pleasure looking at it, and/or the effort creating it, and/or the possibility to recreate it?
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
> But Machines don't make art.
Yes, but the same way that "guns do not kill people". People do (using them).
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
willwilson
Traditional wet darkroom prints are unique hand crafted one of a kind works, typically created from exposure to print by the artist. The traditional photographer may strive for consistency from print to print, but in the end each print is a one of a kind creation. A digital print does not have this unique quality. The same digital file can be used to print a cheap poster or make a fine inkjet print on Ilford Galerie Gold Fibre Silk, you can even email it to a printer and receive a "fine art print" in the mail.
A specious argument. Many well recognized and well respected photographers turn to other people for prints. Avedon didn't make his own prints for example (just to name one). He did in fact receive some of his "fine art prints" in the mail. So what?
Few of the master oil paintings of the Renaissance were painted completely by the masters -- the masters typically did the faces and hands while the apprentices and students did the rest. Again, so what?
This "hand crafted print" argument typically comes from people who have never tried to print digitally and have the completely misguided notion that it's easy. Nothing could be farther from the truth. As anyone who has made a successful inkjet print well knows. It's often more work than a darkroom print. There is often more of the artist's essence in a digital print than in a darkroom print. Because digital can (and that's the operative word -- "can") allow the artist to get closer to his/her vision by removing some of the limitations of the darkroom like toes and shoulders, reciprocity failures (the old CibaChrome papers were notorious for this), highlight dry down, etc.
But in the end, it's still variations of density on a substrate. And what makes it art isn't the substrate or how the density is created -- it's the vision of the artist and how well the artist presents that vision to the viewer.
This is as silly as debating oils vs. acrylics. Come on people -- quit wasting time here and go do something worthwhile -- like making photographs!
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
I can not help but recall the earlier days, and the advent of Dr. Land's Polaroid process. It was not, of course, a "traditional" wet process. However, first in line to exploit its virtues was Ansel Adams, followed by White, Caponigro and a number of well known practitioners. Their work was exhibited and published without exhaustive debate about its worthiness. They were simply using this new process to convey their vision, without the necessity of a darkroom. All of them continued with the traditional methods and the Polaroid process is, for the most part, history.
Now, we have the digital process with which to convey our vision, along with the traditional wet process. We are very fortunate to have both available to us and should accept the fact that they are similar, while being different. They can by definition, never be the same, so any comparison as to superiority is senseless.
Each photographer must make that very personal decision of how he or she want to present their vision. The method chosen should be made with confidence and without reproach.
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bruce Watson
Then you can't buy any photographs regardless of print method. All production cameras are made with machines.
I believe the issue was about the finished image, not what made the camera.
--Gary
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bruce Watson
As anyone who has made a successful inkjet print well knows. It's often more work than a darkroom print.
I actually agree with this, despite being a strictly analog photographer. I use the computer to produce advertisements for shows and for color portfolio images. Yet, I've had so much trouble producing prints on my computer. The cost of equipment that will produce the kind of consistancy I want is well beyone my ability to pay, so sheet after agrivating sheet has come from my printer looking completely different than on the monitor, even after profiling my monitor, printer and scanner, and fine-tuning those profiles hour after teeth-grinding hour. I'm use the darkroom because I'm committed to the process, and because I find digital a frustrating mess.
--Gary
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Photography is also a philosophical discipline. If you cannot put something special into your photos, then the technique is irrelevant, unless the technique helps highlight your philosophy. No one cares how a photo was produced.
Once I walked in into a gallery and was looking at a photo. The gallerist comes to me and starts explaining that the photo has a special value because it was taken with one of these LF cameras that only specially gifted people are able to operate. And that the cameras are so heavy that the photographer needs a team of assistants to carry them. And therefore the photo costs $5k. And additionally, that each photo is an original because each was printed on a different piece of paper with a "unique" emulsion. Well, you can believe in whatever you want, I would never buy a photo just because the guy got in the process poisoned by some chemicals.
As the art history proves, art works that were produced in just a few seconds can have a higher value aesthetic/philosophical than some other that took months to produce. One-two-three and finished, and it costs $5k in a gallery. I saw recently a documentary about Jonathan Meese. One-two-three and so a few times and the exhibition paintings are ready.
I would be more worried, when buying a photo, that if the guy uses only a wet process whether he can develop as an artist, since in my view he restricts his creative options.
I am more annoyed if I have a nice photo, and then I realize that the scan is not the best one and that the company cannot print e.g. yellows as I would like to see them. I still feel, that at the current state-of-the-art the process is still too restrictive. Hope, this will improve so that I have even more creative options.
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
I am coming back to Art vs Craft.
In both the analog and digital process one needs both.
Yet there is something else I feel missing in this discussion - chaos, random, by chance,...
Is it not interesting to see that many artists after years of education both in artistic vision and craft, 'suddenly' apply their own method of craft, another way of seeing, and in many cases explore the facets of what the specific material they are working with is capable of so that they can use the full potential of it to their liking.
Now this is where chaos, random, by chance...comes in. I have experimented with my own different techniques to produce my prints in the wet darkroom. And much of it is the result of chance, i.e. I look at the image and there is something there which I had not planned for, yet it pleases me. So I try to understand how it happened and to see if I can achieve it again. And so I develop the skill for this particular effect.
But, the more I learn, the more I try to control the effect, try to position it in the image, with the right density...sometimes with a poor result until I realize I have to let go of the control.
Many painters paint in seconds 1, 2, 3 finished...for the same reason. They do not want to be in control of the creative process. If they think too much the art becomes a product of the brain rather than the soul.
I think many people who buy art do it also for the story behind it. Especially if you had the chance to visit the artist in person in his/her studio. The background story becomes part of the image and the value.
To me the digital workflow is too much trying to take control and leaving very little opening to random and chance. But then again I am not an expert in the digital darkroom.
Please excuse my ignorance, I do not know the digital workflow enough to understand if there is any 'by chance' or 'chaos' involved in the process. Can someone please explain?
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
I find it ironic that people here seem to think of a print made in a darkroom as having been "hand made," when for so many years one of the big knocks on photography as an art form was that photographs were made by machines and so couldn't be true "art." Now for some reason a print that came from a camera (machine) and that was printed by use of an enlarger (machine) and other mechanical equipment is somehow considered to be "hand-made."
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
What Brian said.
For those who argue that value arises from the possibility of random variation in the output from one print to another, what happens when someone writes a Photoshop plug-in with a random number generator that introduces variations in the printed output from a digital file?
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Oren Grad
What Brian said.
For those who argue that value arises from the possibility of random variation in the output from one print to another, what happens when someone writes a Photoshop plug-in with a random number generator that introduces variations in the printed output from a digital file?
No need to write. The Gaussian noise filter is pre-installed. :D
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
I used to be bias toward digital, but my position has changed.
However, for what is concerned the final stage, namely the print, Inkjet has one major problem, which is metamerism, where different colors shifts at the exposure with differrent light sources. This is a major problem especially for me that I use a lot of sepia tones which seem to be more vulnerable to this effect creating unwanted greens and magentas.
A silver print also change its color at different light sources but at a constant rate throughout the scale of tonalities allowing the brain to adjust to the situation.
As long as this problem and a few others won't be solved I will still prefer a silver print to an inkjet.
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
A lot of fine comments. I'll add a thought or two.
First of all, printing with inkjet is like playing the guitar - it's easy for beginners. There are a lot of levels to professionalism, and lots of extra levels for the mad scientists out there. For instance, there is making a b&w print with color inks. No serious b&w printer would do this. The next level up is to dedicate a printer to use only b&w inks and try that. You might have to learn how to use a RIP, you will find out all sorts of info you never wanted to learn about crossovers and the like. You might have to learn how to linearize. You will certainly need to learn about the different qualities of paper. I am one of those mad scientists out there who has actually mixed up his own b&w inks. It isn't for the impatient, I can tell you that... I am now reformulating my own mixture based upon Jon Cone's Piezotones. (BTW, I don't have any metamerism.) This stuff is hard.
Second, repeatability is a joke. When you are dealing at the top level of printing, one can never assume that you can repeat a print. Perhaps one right after the other. But tomorrow is another day. It might be a different temperature, different humidity, etc. and those things affect the absorption rate of the paper. If I did a print for someone a month ago and they ask for another, I make a test print to see where things are. They never match exactly. The good news is that I usually have all the adjustment layers set to modify different areas of the print and making the modifications is easy - most of the time. Same as having a sheet of paper to remind you how you made that print in the darkroom.
Third, with all this technology, it isn't printing devices that make a good print, it's humans. One either has a rich sensibility or one doesn't. I'm a big fan of history and have studied the styles of a lot of different printers. I know what a gravure print looks like (they are amazing), I made platinum prints for Avedon, and I own a few albumens, etc. It's important to know what's possible to be able to stretch the medium to its best. This is true of any medium.
Years ago, when the cameras first came out it was "any monkey with a camera" can do xyz. Now it's any monkey with a computer and an Epson printer. It wasn't true then and it isn't true now. There are good (and great) photographers and there are those who simply document what things look like, and have nothing to say. There are people who print to see what the image looks like and there are those who print with every fiber of their being.
Lenny
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Lenny Eiger
A lot of fine comments. I'll add a thought or two.
First of all, printing with inkjet is like playing the guitar - it's easy for beginners. There are a lot of levels to professionalism, and lots of extra levels for the mad scientists out there. For instance, there is making a b&w print with color inks. No serious b&w printer would do this. The next level up is to dedicate a printer to use only b&w inks and try that. You might have to learn how to use a RIP, you will find out all sorts of info you never wanted to learn about crossovers and the like. You might have to learn how to linearize. You will certainly need to learn about the different qualities of paper. I am one of those mad scientists out there who has actually mixed up his own b&w inks. It isn't for the impatient, I can tell you that... I am now reformulating my own mixture based upon Jon Cone's Piezotones. (BTW, I don't have any metamerism.) This stuff is hard.
Second, repeatability is a joke. When you are dealing at the top level of printing, one can never assume that you can repeat a print. Perhaps one right after the other. But tomorrow is another day. It might be a different temperature, different humidity, etc. and those things affect the absorption rate of the paper. If I did a print for someone a month ago and they ask for another, I make a test print to see where things are. They never match exactly. The good news is that I usually have all the adjustment layers set to modify different areas of the print and making the modifications is easy - most of the time. Same as having a sheet of paper to remind you how you made that print in the darkroom.
Third, with all this technology, it isn't printing devices that make a good print, it's humans. One either has a rich sensibility or one doesn't. I'm a big fan of history and have studied the styles of a lot of different printers. I know what a gravure print looks like (they are amazing), I made platinum prints for Avedon, and I own a few albumens, etc. It's important to know what's possible to be able to stretch the medium to its best. This is true of any medium.
Years ago, when the cameras first came out it was "any monkey with a camera" can do xyz. Now it's any monkey with a computer and an Epson printer. It wasn't true then and it isn't true now. There are good (and great) photographers and there are those who simply document what things look like, and have nothing to say. There are people who print to see what the image looks like and there are those who print with every fiber of their being.
Lenny
Great, great, great post!
"It's not about the bike...." - Lance Armstrong
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Lenny Eiger
First of all, printing with inkjet is like playing the guitar - it's easy for beginners. There are a lot of levels to professionalism, and lots of extra levels for the mad scientists out there.
I might say - printing with inkjet or in the darkroom is like playing the guitar - it's easy for beginners.
I remember teaching my sister how to make a silver print of a snapshot she took in about 10 minutes. I would say, however, the divide between making a snapshot type silver print and a finely crafted silver print is larger than with digital methods. You can make a pretty nice looking 13x19 on a $300 Epson with a new Digital Rebel right out of the box in auto mode just by reading the manual. For me, this fact is what undermines the value the public and the art community to some extent places on a digital print.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Lenny Eiger
There are people who print to see what the image looks like and there are those who print with every fiber of their being.
Perfect, very well said.
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
willwilson
I might say - printing with inkjet or in the darkroom is like playing the guitar - it's easy for beginners.
I agree wholeheartedly. However, you seem to contradict this in your next statement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
willwilson
I remember teaching my sister how to make a silver print of a snapshot she took in about 10 minutes. I would say, however, the divide between making a snapshot type silver print and a finely crafted silver print is larger than with digital methods. You can make a pretty nice looking 13x19 on a $300 Epson with a new Digital Rebel right out of the box in auto mode just by reading the manual. For me, this fact is what undermines the value the public and the art community to some extent places on a digital print.
Pretty nice? How is that different from your sister's effort? I am not particularly interested in "pretty nice" (altho I do take pictures of my family as well, just like everyone else, that I print out on inxexpensive paper, etc.)
I AM interested in museum quality prints - and those are hard to do, no matter what you use. Black and White is always harder, of course...
Lenny
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
If Picasso wanted something all he had to do was draw a line around it...
The value resides in the artist... the medium is secondary.
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Annie M.
If Picasso wanted something all he had to do was draw a line around it...
The value resides in the artist... the medium is secondary.
Yeah, but "Mr. P" was way overrated IMHO.
If a Picasso squiggle line brings umpteen million dollars on e-bay it is likely because it is Picasso's squiggle, squiggled by Mr. P himself. You can probably get a calender of Picasso's squiggles at an bookstore for a pittance when the calenders are on clearance.
Is what is "valued" the ink from Picasso's pen and the labor of the old spaniard or the calender?
I maintain that it likely was valued by Picasso. It is certainly valued by the museum or collector who will fork out the moo-lah for an original Picasso (and those who wished they had the moo-lah) but for the squiggle loving art enthusiast the value is more likely in the calender which can also be cut and framed when the year is up :)
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
allow me to clarify my concept...
The value resides in the artist... the artist's medium is secondary.
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Annie M.
allow me to clarify my concept...
The value resides in the artist... the artist's medium is secondary.
I think the concept here is quite sound.
Picasso may be an odd example. What about Ansel? I saw older prints he made that are platinum prints and they look nothing like his later work, nothing like what most people imagine as an Ansel Adam's print. The only constant is Ansel. He used two different (at least) modalities in which to work. Neither is lesser. You can like whichever you want.
It certainly is as difficult, if not more difficult, to make an exquisite print using digital printing methods. It takes just as much vision, and seeing to be able to do it. They can't be less, unless the overall quality is less. The overall quality is at least equal, with the right materials and tools. What remains is whether the artist exhibits some genius or not.
Lenny
Lenny
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Annie M.
allow me to clarify my concept...
The value resides in the artist... the artist's medium is secondary.
Please clarify further as I'm not getting your drift.
Is the value in the artist---as in say, an organ donor? Or is it in the artist's work? Or name? Or vision?
Certainly I'd agree with you on any of the above. But the artist's medium, while secondary (and I agree with you on that point as well) is a manifestation of the artist's vision---a phantasm that is given a form.
I think the OP's question was regarding a value applied to that form.
Like a wood sculpture whittled with a jack knife as opposed to a wood sculpture made with a Dremel. Assuming both are desireable is one worth more than the other?
Is the satisfaction an artist might get from using more primitive tools a "value" that translated into money (if indeed that satisfaction can exceed the satisfaction taken in a wood carver using a Dremel?) Any added monitary value because of the medium rests with whomever is paying the fare.
I don't mean that monetary value is the only value--far from it---but that was the line of thought which I understood from the OP's question
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
"Does the uniqueness of a traditional print and the process itself add substantial value to the work..."
no... thus my reference to Picasso and the drawing of a line... anyone can draw a line... the value in this instance is that it is Picasso's line.
"... do you find that the quality and content of the image overides the method of creation?"
no... quality,image & method should coexist as one cohesive entity... each of these are the artist's choices to manifest an idea.
" Is the medium an image is created in only a means used to deliver a photographer/artist's vision?"
no it is integral... but is a matter of artistic choice... however you can't tapdance a painting.
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Annie M.
"Does the uniqueness of a traditional print and the process itself add substantial value to the work..."
no... thus my reference to Picasso and the drawing of a line... anyone can draw a line... the value in this instance is that it is Picasso's line.
So is the value the line that Picasso drew, the very same line on the very same paper?
Or
Is the value in the line drawn by Picasso which can be reproduced anywhere on anything?
If so then the original is more valuable than the calender, isn't it?
What needs to be determined in order to make this relevent to the question at hand is what constitutes an original photograph?
A image printed digitally can certainly be original.
But it can never be an original silver print.
So do we value the originality? Or the silver?
These kinds of issues are why I photograph in my own parallel universe ;)
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
I think the squiggly line makes a good point. What if Picasso supervised the printing of the squiggly line calendars and they were a limited edition? Then the museum crazies would be buying them up like mad. Where's the added value in relation to a mass produced calendar?
I think what gets me about the digital printing thing is you can't supervise the enlarger and the chemicals while they make your fine print. You have to make the thing yourself.
Go watch this video on Joel Meyerowitz. He even has an assistant running his digital printing. Apparently Edward and Ansel were compromising their images by printing wet (minute 3:30 in the video below). You wanna talk about overated...I do like some of his landscapes though.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=lv_qE_J_mHg
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
willwilson
I think the squiggly line makes a good point. What if Picasso supervised the printing of the squiggly line calendars and they were a limited edition? Then the museum crazies would be buying them up like mad. Where's the added value in relation to a mass produced calendar?
I think what gets me about the digital printing thing is you can't supervise the enlarger and the chemicals while they make your fine print. You have to make the thing yourself.
Go watch this video on Joel Meyerowitz. He even has an assistant running his digital printing. Apparently Edward and Ansel were compromising their images by printing wet (minute 3:30 in the video below). You wanna talk about overated...I do like some of his landscapes though.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=lv_qE_J_mHg
COmpared to the control we have now with Photoshop, SIlver printing does go through compromising.
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
This thread is interesting and valuable for a range of reasons, but if you measure "value of a print" by its marketplace value, then this discussion is largely irrelevant. Serious photo galleries have long since settled the debate about analog vs. digital in favor of digital. There are some major artists who still produce (though not exclusively) wet darkroom prints--Sally Mann and Hiroshi Sugimoto for example--but they are increasingly rare.
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Re: The Value of a Fine Print?
The first criteria of a print for me is if I like it. I consider nothing else at that point.
I don't purchase a print because of how it is made, but I am more likely to be impacted by, and purchase a print where the photographer has taken full advantage of the medium they have chosen as part of the expression. Not because of the medium, but the medium has it's contribution if the print is well conceived and executed. That the artists who produce work I like tend to work in traditional or alt process says much about my own tastes, and not much at all about anything else. I do own a couple of inkjet prints, because I like them, and they are well executed.
Denying that the process of a print has an impact on the presence or appearance of a print and that all process is somehow homogeneous in conclusion simply denies reality.
Persons insecure about their own methods usually take this simpleton position, or the opposite, elitist viewpoint, but no process nor denial of process will fix a bad idea or execution.
The process is an undeniable contributer to the context and presence of a well done print, so in that sense it is entirely relevant.