Of course this all points up how artificial it is to make limited editions of digital prints. It is ridiculous enough to do this with traditional prints, though one could argue that over time a color neg/transparency might fade, or a neg might be damaged, genuinely limiting the edition. For a digital file, as long as it's backed up and profiles are revised for new print technologies, there really is no sense to limiting the edition except as a marketing ploy.
Well said. And the more elaborate and contrived the edition and pricing structure is, the more it becomes a parody of the whole art game.
I think that the ability to churn out additional identical prints at the push of a button runs a substantial risk of changing people's perceptions of what a photograph is and should be worth, and of undermining pricing power over the long run, particularly for photographers whose work is hard to distinguish from other work already out there - which is to say, most of us.
Speaking for myself, if I were ever to find an inkjet or other digital printing method that produces output I like, I'd happily sell prints for $100-200, rather than $750-1000. I know I would never make big bucks at it anyway, and as far as the ego gratification is concerned, I would gain much more satisfaction from knowing that 100 people bought my picture because they like the way it looks than I would from knowing that 10 well-heeled snobs bought it under the delusion that they were displaying their superior connoisseurship or were going to make a killing on a limited edition.
As for the purely tactical question of whether "reproduction prints" are likely to work as a marketing strategy, I can only speak for myself as one buyer among millions. If the $150 "reproduction print" from a contemporary photographer were indistinguishable from the "original", I'd buy it in preference to the original. And if it were clearly inferior, I wouldn't buy it at all - I'd go shopping for someone else's $50 poster instead.
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