Last May, a good friend loaned us a copy of the AMMO book, 125 photographs by Edward Weston. He referenced this thread and asked our opinion of the reproductions. We finally had the time to carefully look at the AMMO book and our Lodima Press book, Edward Weston: Life Work side by side. I trust it is never too late to weigh in. I must state up front that my wife, Paula Chamlee and I are the owners of Lodima Press.

First general impression of the AMMO book is that the printing is weak. A more careful look is that reveals that a few of the plates, those with a deep enough black tone, are okay, but most are gray, lifeless, totally dead. They are the barest illustrations of the actual photographs. In most of the plates the black tones are extraordinarily weak. I have seen other poorly reproduced books of Weston’s work, but these are perhaps the poorest of all.

The middle gray tones are flat, without modulation, and in many plates the highlights are blown out—something never found in an Edward Weston print. It appears that the publisher just took the scans supplied by the Center and printed them as is, without first even proofing them and comparing them to the original prints and then making the appropriate corrections. Our guess is that the scans were made for archival purposes only and not with high-end reproduction in mind. They have enough detail in them; it is not a question of resolution, but of tonal values.

There are twelve reproductions in both books under discussion. In one or two of those twelve, our reproductions look a little bit too dark. Although in the AMMO book those are lighter, they are also weaker.

When “wet proofs” were made for our Lodima Press book, we carried the press sheets to the museums (three times, even flying to the museums to do this) where the prints were then hanging (unfortunately, the exhibition was already traveling before we got the go ahead to be the publisher), and we compared the press proofs to the originals and made notes on them and returned the sheets to the printer so they could make the appropriate corrections where necessary. To our surprise, when we compared the reproductions that seemed too dark to the original prints, they matched. Our goal when printing the book was not to do anything to “improve” on Weston’s prints, but to match them as precisely as we could. In this regard the following story is appropriate:

We know the collector who owns Edward’s own copy of Pepper #30. Edward considered it the best print he made from that negative. Eventually, Ehe gave the print to Brett. And Brett gave it to a friend whose father was a close friend of Edward and Brett and who had grown up around the Westons. The friend sold it to this collector in 1974. (Way too soon.)

When we showed the collector the book Edward Weston: Life Work, he brought down this print of Pepper #30, which we had seen previously, and placed it next to the reproduction of Pepper #30. We (me, Paula, the collector and the collector’s wife) looked very carefully at the print and at the reproduction, trying to find differences. There were a few, but they were virtually imperceptible without extremely close scrutiny, and even then, truly, there was hardly any difference between the print and the 600-line screen reproduction.

After about three minutes of this intense looking the collector’s wife said, “You know, I think I like the reproduction better.”

During the printing, we stood on press during the printing of the book, asking for further minute adjustments the few times we felt they were necessary. Unless one has seen and signed off on a wet proof of every plate in the book, not to have someone knowledgeable stand on press during the printing of a book of photographs shows contempt for the art being reproduced. I doubt very much if AMMO had anyone, or at least anyone knowledgeable, stand on press for the printing of this book.

Other: the wrong paper was used. It is too dull and no varnish to the plates was applied. This attributed to the deadness of most of the reproductions.

The AMMO book is beautifully designed. It is a pity the publisher did not care about reproduction quality.

Print selection: Unless one is determined to publish an Edward Weston book that does not reproduce any photograph previously published, something perhaps impossible to achieve today, any decent book of Weston’s photographs would reproduce some already well-known and often reproduced pictures. We disagree with the anonymous writer who said that the selection was only of well-known pictures. We found a number that we had seen reproduced only rarely and to our surprise saw two that we were unfamiliar with. (In our photography book library we own every book of Edward Weston’s photographs except perhaps some recently published ones.) The selection in the AMMO book was varied enough that, even though the reproduction are poor, we bought a copy today.

Michael A. Smith