Make Your Own Prints Part 1

The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance. ~Ansel Adams

At one of the first fairs I attended an amatuer photographer asked me how I printed my work. I began telling her about the Epson printer and various papers I use. She interrupted with "I just go to Sam's- it's cheaper." This startled me- I think I mumbled something like "yeah it would be" in reply. There is a trend among digital photographers- especially among those who started directly with digital equipment verses those who started with film cameras- to outsource their printmaking. Presumably those photographers who are wishing to sell their work are using a more sophisticated outfit then Sam's. To be sure there are some very good companies that produce (technically) high quality prints on fine papers. But no photographer who's presenting their work as art should be doing this.

What do collectors of photography seek? A print made by the artist. Anyone can go into the library of the University of New Mexico and check out Ansel Adam's negatives. They can make all the prints they want from them. Are these prints then worth anything? Of course not- they weren't made by Ansel Adams. For all practical purposes negatives are worthless. Files on a computer are even more worthless.

The print is everything when it comes to photography being presented as art. The exercise of the photographer's eye is just as critical in making the print as it is in taking the original picture. And the quality of the print is just as important as the subject of the picture itself. The print is the actual work of art being created by the photographer. It is the end goal of all else the art photographer is doing. But in the digital era many photographers- especially those starting out in the digital world- have lost sight of this.

All the better art festivals require that photographers make their own prints. But I know there are photographers getting in to top-end art festivals who aren't doing this. I'm not saying this to knock festival organizers- it would be very difficult to effectively police this.

More on this in the next post.