digital vs analog for gallery art

emraphoto said:
I don't think anyone here is creating a false dichotomy. We are sharing experience.

Regardless of what the photographer uses to capture or print, it has been consistently my experience that wet/darkroom prints command a premium. Will you still be able to exhibit digital C prints? Obviously. There is more to the selling ability of a particular photog than materials. Subject matter, exhibition history, name/brand, agency, etc.

I know a few here, who exhibit in established venues, that might chime in. I recently spoke with one of them on the phone (opposite sides of a very large body of water) about this very matter and his experience was similar. Perhaps his two pence will show up?
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You can have fibre based silver gelatin prints made on lambda laser printers and hand developed so the finished article is the same as a hand printed print. So what do you call it then? A silver gelatin fibre based print? Is it expected that the process has to be declared. I guess anyone with integrity will make it clear the process is digital to wet print or film to digital to wet print or film to wet print.
 
tlitody said:
You can have fibre based silver gelatin prints made on lambda laser printers and hand developed so the finished article is the same as a hand printed print. So what do you call it then? A silver gelatin fibre based print? Is it expected that the process has to be declared. I guess anyone with integrity will make it clear the process is digital to wet print or film to digital to wet print or film to wet print.
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What is typically done in museums and galleries is to describe what the material (medium) is... In other words, what the piece itself is made of. Not how it was arrived at. So you get, "Oil on canvas" but not whether it was applied with a brush, a stick, poured or whatever. Photos will usually just say, "Silver gelatin print" or "Chromogenic print". Again, nobody cares if it came from a digital file or a negative.

Cheers,
Gary
 
In my highly limited experience the public, gallery owners and other photographers seem to want the handmade wet print. I just had a show that ended today, I made a substantial profit and I didn't expect to and I got a lot of business out of it. I sold the wet prints for far more than the gallery normally charged for digital.

Also, The gallery owner would not separate the show until the end, so the buyer had to wait until the show ended to get their print. Most people don't want to wait for something they've already paid for but they apparently saw the value in the wet print enough to wait.

The number of people who complimented me on the wet print process was staggering so I completely disagree that the public and especially gallery owners don't care doesn't seem viable because they were adamant about the prints and they showed sincerity with their wallets.

Under glass I cannot distinguish between fiber and RC.

Given the opportunity to own a print from a photographer I admire, I would only buy a wet print.

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I had photos exhibited this time last year and they were scanned 6x6 film printed fairly large digitally. They nearly all sold so I guess people liked them.
 
It's subjective based on the gallery and what people are looking for and how good the photographer is. Collectors are more interested in wet-prints. Consumers don't really care a lot and base it more on the photos. Galleries are a mixed bag depending on their mandate and what they think will sell and where their philosophy lies. If you're considering equipment based on what will sell as an end result, you might be setting yourself up. If you shoot better digitally than with film, roll with your M8. If you're going to shoot a Hasselblad 'cause you think the prints will sell, you might be setting yourself up for a lot of frustration as it's a completely different machine to shoot with. If you're a lousy printer in the darkroom than your prints will be tough to sell even if you might shoot well.
 
In my discussions with well-established photographers whose works regularly feature in prominent auction houses, it is their view that (non-vintage) silver prints do command a premium. Its not staggering, but it is there. That said, the same photographers do also produce editions of inkjet prints, but normally only for the really big stuff which can be problematic and staggeringly expensive to have done on fibre paper.

Me? I am busily preparing for an exhibition in London in Nov and I will be producing everything at 20x24 and smaller as silver prints and those 30" and bigger as archival pigment/inkjets. Its what makes sense to me now, but in future I might do things differently! One thing to bear in mind is the current fashion for very big prints, which is more easily achieved with digital printing, so one requirement (maximum market appeal) offsets the other (sale price of a print). There are no rules, just think about it, decide what you want to do and why, then do it. Whatever you do, you'll be in good company as long as you do it well!
 
Sigh...we're still discussing "wet-print vs. digital print"? Let me just reiterate: This is a FALSE DICHOTOMY. Firstly, there's actually no such thing as a digital print (unless you're printing 0's and 1's), there's just prints from a digital file.
From a digital file you can either make an inkjet/pigment/giclée print or a wet-print. There are numerous ways by which you can arrive at a wet-print from a digital file:
- Expose the paper with a special digital projector that acts as an enlarger
- Create a negative from a digital file and then enlarge it traditionally
- ''Printing'' the image line-for-line unto a roll of photographic paper with a laser and then develop the paper traditionally.

All this, of course, just relates to printing. It has nothing to do with the capture medium itself being digital of film based. Most artists working with color film these days work with a digital file at some point in the process. Even if they don't do any manipulations it's just easier to do basic corrections and retouching on a digital file. It's for this reason that Kodak optimized its latest emulsions for scanning.

As far as the value of different print types on the market is concerned, I see a lot of mix-up in this discussion. We probably should differentiate between the vintage print and the contemporary photography market. Obviously a vintage Avedon print from the 50s will be much more valuable than a new print ''authorised'' by the Avedon Foundation. But I think that is beside the point here.

We can discuss whether digital or film based photography is preferred in the photography art world or we can discuss whether inkjet or wet-prints are preferred but we should not confuse the two points.
 
Remove the pedantry and we're talking about ink-jet vs. the rest.

At Arles you see everything, but my impression (from the commercial galleries) is that wet prints command a premium: modest, but readily detectable. "Wet print" ain't just silver gelatinee, of course. Gim bichromate, anyone? Or dichromate, for pedantic modernists.

As for size, too many people subscrbe to the view "if you can't make it good, make it big."·The full-time commercial galleries stock very few pictures bigger than 11x14 inch, and plenty as small as 5x7 inch. Of coourse there are good, big pics, but there are plenty of bad, big pics too.

Cheers,

R.
 
It's my impression that the smaller work I have seen in high end galleries tends to be either vintage work or from just before the 'bigger is better' bug bit. I have seen relatively little work from the last five years in such places that is below 20x16, actually make that 30x20. Out of 20 photographers exhibiting work as part of the Hearst 8x20 Biennial in New York earlier this year, my work (17" long prints) was the smallest apart from one (which were undeniably well-suited to their petite 5" square dimensions and would have been ruined by making them bigger). The next smallest was 30" and the largest about 60".

To get a feel for the market, I visited perhaps a dozen galleries in Manhattan while there and the picture (scuse the pun) was the same. I don't doubt that smaller prints are viable, but unless you are well established, or have a style that very specifically suits smaller sizes, I suspect that many galleries will be less inclined to seriously consider your work. Its a fad and it wil pass, but thats scant consolation to those who want to work at more modest sizes. I'd go further than Roger and say that making small prints big can very often make good prints bad.

All this said, you have surely have to follow your instincts and your own path. Mine is to continue making silver prints at modest sizes with the exception of those images which clearly suit being printed very large. I am not going to ruin good images by printing them too large. I consider that approach the wisest investment in the long run.
 
I don't know if this helps but I have shown small 8"x6" b&w analogue prints so that people would have to walk up to them and not passively gaze from afar. My most recent show was in a public space, a small cafe in fact and I did not want people struggling to get around the patrons there so I had b&w digital prints about 20"x 20" so they could be easily seen. Also, passers by could get a good view because they were large ( the prints, not the viewers ). Just a word, I scan film and load the scans onto iPhoto and then have a little iphoto book made. These are cheap. I pick the ones I want to exhibit and take the book and negs to a pro to scan and make the large prints. The book gives her (the pro was a woman ) something to go by, other wise she would have no idea. Apologies for this long turgid reply.
 
jsrockit said:
Whatever works for the image you are printing. There are no rules, only trends.
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And that is I guess at the heart of this question: some galleries want only "wet prints", others don't care as long as it's "archival". But there certainly is a trend towards a kind of presentation.

Also, the more they look the same together, the more it's considered "a series" (as evidenced by most exhibits I've seen), to the point of promoting more a "product" than anything. Don't forget: many galleries are in it for the money, and there's a symbiosis between the trendy art purchasers/collectors and galleries (i.e. supply and demand).

Trying to sell a beautifully-handcrafted fountain pen to a crayon crowd could be an exercise in frustration.
 
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