If the negative is the score and the print the performance....

[Darin Boville]

...why then do people think they are the best printers of their own negatives?

Why isn't having expert printers making prints the standard?

(Just finishing the first part of printing a big project and waiting for the prints to finish...)

--Darin

[Leigh]

Why isn't having expert printers making prints the standard?

For the same reason you don't have expert photographers making the negatives.

Would you load your camera, then hand it to someone else to shoot the roll, yet claim the shots to be yours?

- Leigh

[Darin Boville]

For the same reason you don't have expert photographers making the negatives.

Would you load your camera, then hand it to someone else to shoot the roll, yet claim the shots to be yours?

- Leigh

I don't understand your interpretation of the analogy. I assume a composer create the score. By analogy, the photographer creates the negative (score).

Why would someone else create the negative? Why wouldn't the composer create the score?

--Darin

[invisibleflash]

For the same reason you don't have expert photographers making the negatives.

Would you load your camera, then hand it to someone else to shoot the roll, yet claim the shots to be yours?

- Leigh

With me it is $. I'd love to have someone else do my work. I'm years behind even looking at my photos.Although this is digital work. film work only a few months behind cause I'm not doing much film anymore.

[Darin Boville]

(Whatever, Leigh.)

For those actually interested in the topic here, I just came across a closely related article. After I posted the above I went over to the online photographer and followed Mike's WSJ link to:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/...260992254.html

And there in the first sentence is Ansel's analogy. Weird, huh? The article looks at the analogy from the perspective of considering how it may or may not apply to posthumous work, such as that by Vivian Maier and Gary Winograd. But wrapped all up in the "others printing" question.

--Darin

[Darin Boville]

And then, reading more of Woodward's work, we come across this article in the Atlantic, 2003, where he talks about a "Benjamin Walter" (!) who was making new prints from Man Ray's negatives. Accusations of forgery.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...-thing/302751/

Related to the question here, Woodward asks:

"If someone makes a contemporary print from the original negative and then falsely sells that print as vintage, is this thing a "forgery"? Or should it be called something else—something less damning?"

Perhaps that term should be "performance"?

--Darin

[Leigh]

"If someone makes a contemporary print from the original negative and then falsely sells that print as vintage, is this thing a "forgery"? Or should it be called something else—something less damning?"

If the printer clearly identifies the print as his own work, I don't see any problem.

On the other hand, if the printer states or suggests that the print is original, there is certainly fraudulent intent.

- Leigh

[Mark Barendt]

Darin I don't think the premise you suggest in this thread is Adams' premise, it's more Henri Cartier-Bresson's.

IMO the premise as used by Adams was used to help people understand that creating a negative was part of a whole that included printing, a perfect negative is not the goal.

In my mind it isn't that I can make the best print from my negative, it is that I am the only one that can make "my print" from "my negative".

[Michael Graves]

You can lean either way on this. W. Eugene Smith farmed his printing out. I attended a talk by him when I was in college in the early seventies and he told us that himself. I doubt if many people consider his less of an artist for that. Prints of his images still bring thousands of dollars. In later life, Ansel turned over printing of his negatives to trusted assistants. While the prints by assistants don't bring as much as one printed by the man, they are still well beyond my ability to afford. And they are still amazing works of art. Is it the printer that gets the credit? If you suck at printing, let somebody else do it. If you suck at creating an image, take up pottery.

[John Kasaian]

If the negative is the score and the print the performance, I'd like the directions to the snack bar