The Value of a Fine Print?

[Toyon]

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.

[clay harmon]

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.

[Michael Gordon]

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?

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

[Martin Courtenay-Blake]

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

[Bruce Watson]

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.

[willwilson]

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?

[reellis67]

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

[Bill_1856]

Piffel! (Piffle! if you're British.)

[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.

[Toyon]

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.