This article in the Washington Post, (found via Ron Diorio's new blog) raises interesting questions about market values and how they might be established. Ron's take is here.
For decades a good rule of thumb for anyone collecting photography was "the older the better."
Vintage prints (most often black and white silver prints produced around the time the photograph actually was made), and especially those personally made by prominent photographers, were highly prized by collectors and galleries. Prices for such work by Ansel Adams, Paul Strand, Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus or Cartier-Bresson (though he rarely printed his own photos) reflected this truism.
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One note of caution, however. Computer-generated Iris and Epson prints, even in signed limited editions such as we produce, may always be viewed in the higher echelons of the fine art photography market as just that: computer-generated, as opposed to hand-made. I remember, for example, respected New York photography dealer John Stevenson conceding to me that, while beautifully done black and white Iris prints of our Venice work surely can approach -- or even rival at times -- one-of-a-kind platinum/palladium prints, "my clients won't touch them." Why? Largely because Iris prints are produced with the push of a button, and not by a master printer working alone in the dark.
This secondary procedure -- the individual printing of the image in the darkroom -- added to the final product's appeal in the marketplace as an individually made, virtually one-of-a-kind, example of genuine craftsmanship, if not a whole separate art form in an of itself.
With digital, this concept -- this quaint artistic conceit of uniqueness and artisanal craftsmanship -- barely exists. What this amounts to is the blurring of the line between original photographic prints and posters. In fact digital has created a wide -- and oftentimes gorgeous -- middle ground: the computer-generated facsimile of an original photograph, whether film or digital, that can be produced en masse after the initial prep and set-up, no matter who is pushing the button.
Or, in other words, vintage shmintage.
It's worth noting that such prints often are printed on fine art paper in signed and numbered limited editions to lend them cachet in the marketplace and to correctly set apart these beautifully printed (albeit mechanical) reproductions from a run of posters or similar reproductions that are made on comparatively much cheaper stock and offered to the general public in huge numbers.
I have never been happy with the idea of limited editions in photography. The essence of the medium is that it can be reproduced. Of course having made a print, that print becomes the 'object of desire', but that desire should I think be based on the image, not the antiquity of the physical print or the craft skills involved.
...on the digital front I have to confess my own prejudice that, marvelous though something like Photoshop may be for making digital prints, its multiple menus -- and those available from other sources -- seem at times like a midnight smorgasboard on a cruise ship: simply too much, and of too little actual value. In addition, the troglodyte in me values the idea that it is the artist who initially decides what he or she wants to produce, then goes about producing it (silver print, C-print, platinum print, solarized print, etc.) within the confines of that decision, and not at the whim of a pulldown menu of printing options.
This is just plain nonsense. The process of making a digital image involves just as many decisions as any darkroom print. The idea that because those decisions are taken from a menu in a computer program they are of 'little actual value' suggests either Luddite thinking or someone who has never actually done it. I suppose an original Anselm Adams print, prepared and made by Adams himself has some value over one produced by a technician, if only because there is a sense of continuity with the man himself. The computer stores your 'darkroom' decisions for you so that they can be repeated ad infinitum. However many so called 'original' photographic prints are made from internegatives which is just another way of storing those darkroom decisions - albeit with a loss of image quality that doesn't happen with digital printing.
There are two forces at work here. The market wants scarcity to keep prices up. The technology available to us works against scarcity by reinforcing the capacity of photography to create multiple images. The scarcity of the market can only be maintained by artificial devices and appeals to comparisons with painting and the 'one off' image that don't stand up to scrutiny.
