This doesn’t relate to the environment in any direct way, but I think it’s important and hard information to come by. This week-end I will be working my first juried art fair (the Riverdale Art Walk in Toronto). In preparation I have been going through my inventory of fine art prints and cataloguing them, editioning and entering everything into a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet includes lots of good info including title, file name, description, date printed, size, paper, purchase info and edition. This has been a very fulfilling process (I love structure and organization) but the editioning was giving me headaches, as I have some images printed in several different sizes, on different papers, with slightly different tonalities and slightly different crops. I was a bit baffled. Luckily there was a talk this week at the Stephen Bulger Gallery called Collecting Photographs 101. The talk was aimed at collectors getting their feet wet, but I figured it would be highly useful for a photographer as well. Stephen Bulger gave the talk and was available to chat afterwards. Stephen runs a very reputable photography gallery in Toronto and is one of the founders of the CONTACT photography festival. Additionally he is a collector. I’d be hard pressed to find someone in a better position to advise me regarding editioning photographs. And what did he say? What are the hard and fast rules of editioning? Frustratingly, there are none! But generally speaking the following should be applied:
~Work should be signed, either on the front or the back, in pen or pencil, but on the print itself (rather than the mat).
~Written on the work should be the title, the date the picture was taken, the edition, the artist’s signature and the date the image was printed (note, two dates).
~An edition may include work of one specific size or of various sizes combined. For a collector the latter may be preferable. That is to say, a photographer may print at 3 different sizes (small, medium, large). If they are editioned separately it is difficult for the collector to know exactly how many prints in total could be in circulation and in fact the photographer could at any point decide to add a new edition in a 4th size, thus adding to the total number of available prints. The higher the total number, the less exciting for the collector.
~I think that for me, editioning various sizes together is preferable (or perhaps editioning in 2 batches, say larger and smaller than 11×17). I appreciate the value from a collector’s perspective as above, but I also don’t want to feel completely constrained in the sizing of my prints. From time to time I print specific sizes to match specific frames (I collect vintage frames) and making a new edition for each slightly different print size seems awkward and unjustified.
~Work sold before an edition was instated should be included in the edition, ie. if one piece sold, pre-edition, start the edition at #2.
~There is no issue with printing an edition on different papers.
~While a low quality print should not be included in an edition, it is permissable to re-tweak an image for the same edition. For example I sometimes go back and find a slightly better colour calibration for an image file, or may adjust the exposure slightly. This is okay so long as it does not significantly change the aesthetic of the photograph and so long as both versions are of high quality.
~Mild changes in cropping can be included in the same edition. Significant crops may need to be considered as different images.
~There is not universal agreement among photographers about the value or need to edition work at all. Larry Towell is one example of an well-known and established photographer who does not edition his work. There is always the option of having open editions, which may decrease the value of an image but will certainly simplify the process.
There’s a good discussion here about ethical dilemmas that could be faced re: limited edition prints.
I found another decent article on editioning photographs here.
Best of luck if this is the road you are on. For my part I will continue to dream of a simple and perfect rule book for photographers. In the meantime, back to work.
