Some of Picasso's lithographs were signed on the plate and were designed to be lithographs. Others were reproductions of existing works and signed on the print.
Some of Picasso's lithographs were signed on the plate and were designed to be lithographs. Others were reproductions of existing works and signed on the print.
When the limited-edition-ness of a print becomes relevant to the price, then something more than the print is being sold; call it "collectability". Collectability is a cross product of market forces and psychological factors, and a more sophisticated level of salesmanship is required. These are business concerns, and have nothing to do with aesthetics or art.
There often is the implication that a limited edition print is artistically superior to a print from a subsequent (call it) poster run of the same image. When such superiority is in fact not present in the limited edition (or invisible to the buyer, which amounts to the same thing), then unless it is explicitly denied, one enters into a foggy moral area where unethical business practices are likely.
I don't mean to imply that buying something for its collectability is silly or stupid, just that it is an invisible quality that is independent of the value of the visual art. For instance, I would pay substantially more for a print handmade by St. Ansel, than I would for the same image cut out of a book, even if I couldn't see any difference between the two. The mechanics of the limited edition are the means whereby the seller would guarantee the handmadeness to me.
the growing majority, though, seems to care more about the image and hardly at all about the process
Just to be clear, in the specific context of book vs inkjet, the reason I'd pay more is that I think the book looks better.
It's hard to separate process snobbery from esthetic preference because, at least when it comes to monochrome prints, the products of the new processes just look different from those made in the traditional ways, and personal preferences could go one way or the other.
That said, in principle I could see myself paying a modest premium for a work rendered using a particular process even if the process had no impact on the final appearance, if I wanted to show my respect and support for the efforts of a particular craftsman whose work I admire. But there are pretty tight limits to how far I would go, and I wouldn't ever pay a large premium for a work of art or craft that is expensive purely because of the scarcity value of an artificially limited edition, regardless of the process that was used to produce it.
CXC, i think that's an excellent summary of the issues.
there's one way a smart collector can often outsmart the market ... by buying a later print rather than a vintage print. the idea that a print made early in the edition (or within x years of the making of the negative) is going to be better is a silly one that i suspect was created by dealers, and carried over from traditional printmaking (where the quality of the impression was physically better early on).
part of the justification for this is that earlier prints will somehow be closer to the photographer's original vision. i see many cases, though, when the photographer's vision, or maybe skills, improved over the years. in these cases, the later print is better, at least to my eyes. and it's invariably cheaper. if i was a collector, this is where i'd be looking for my bargains.
If I were a collector, I'd most definitely prefer owning something from 1950 than from 2005, even if the craft had improved in the meanwhile. Collectors collect *objects*, not visions: visions they can see in a book, in the museum, or even on the internet.
Ansel did have a series of prints done by assistants and initialed by him rather than signed. They cost much less and enable purchasers to have an AA print without the cost of the final enlarged exhibition print. Not a bad way to go. Is this any different than the marketing ploy being used by the photographer mentioned to start this topic?
One could argue that the difference between AA prints and the assistant's prints was clear enough, since both were made by hand, one of them being AA's own hand. For a machine-made print, the distinction sounds more problematic. Would the crux of the matter be whether both prints are made using the same master file ? What if the master file for the original print was not prepared by the photographer in the first place ? Note that those questions are general, and do not necessarily refer to the photographer taken as example. I learned about a number of other well-known photographers who engage in the practice of "reproduction/special edition" prints. A few particularly succesfull photographers, by their own admission, do not do the digital work on their images.
A few particularly succesfull photographers, by their own admission, do not do the digital work on their images.
A few particularly successful photographers who work purely with analog processes, for example Salgado, also don't do their own printing. Should that matter?
I would expect those photographers who do not print or prepare master files themselves not to have two series of prints marketed like AA did, since none of them would be distinguished as "made by the photographer".
OK, I see you're continuing to refine the definition of not-quite-original prints.
Just one observation about the original question re the meaning of "reproduction" - in the absence of any further explanation, I would assume that this means a second generation print, created by scanning or photographing an original print and then putting the resulting copy image on to paper with a printing processs that may or may not be the same as the one originally used. It wouldn't have occurred to me to use "reproduction" to refer to different editions printed from the same master digital file, or from the same negative (as, for example, Alan Ross' current "Yosemite Special Edition" prints from AA's negatives).
"I would assume that this means a second generation print, created by scanning or photographing an original print and then putting the resulting copy image on to paper with a printing processs that may or may not be the same as the one originally used."
This has always been a gray area. The whole idea of an "original print" is a bit oxymoronic, but it's an idea we tend to respect without having a firm definition for it. A purist might say that no print is original; the original is the negative, the painting, the etching plate, or the lithographer's stone, and the nature of any printmaking medium is to sell reprproductions and not originals. But still, some reproductions strike us as more original than others.
One of the darkest gray areas has been when someone uses a commercial lab to print a limited edition. There's nothing wrong with this, but it raises the question of how this edition can be distinguished from any other reproduction that comes along afterwards. It's not even a safe bet that a poster edition will be made from a print; it may well be made from an original chrome or from a scanned negative.
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