“What Makes Your Photographic Print an ‘Original’?”

I’ve heard this question many times in conversations with fellow artists, mostly creators in the object-oriented arts such as painting or sculpture artists, and it’s not that I don’t get where they’re coming from. I understand that when I look at one of the beautiful pieces of ceramics my friend Abid creates in his studio with his very own hands, I instinctively know that this piece of art is an original, meaning there is only this one single piece of it, a one-off work of art. Looking at my friend Boris’ beautiful watercolour paintingsI see the exact same thing: these pieces are originals as there is no other single identical work.

Creating Reproductions

Now, both artists produce images of their art to allow their audience to see their creations. Abid may take photographs of his work from different views in his pottery atelier and Boris asks a photographer to create perfect images of his artwork, rich in detail and as colour accurate as possible. Both use their photographs to market their art, to document their progress and to present their final art to their potential buyers. While Abid’s options end here, Boris has the option to sell the photographs the photographer shot of his art and earn some extra revenue from the sales. He sells reproductions of his original artwork on his website to customers who cannot or don’t want to pay the price for Boris’ originals. These prints are labeled ‘reproduction print’ and they are available in an open (unlimited) edition. Or a buyer fell in love with the painting but is left with the option to buy a reproduction print as the original has already been sold to another buyer.

What we can see here is that there is a clear distinction between the original artwork and a reproduction which customers can buy for decoration purposes at an affordable price. There will never be any discussion about what is the original and what is not.

Originals as a Result of Mechanical Reproduction

Now let’s talk about fine art photographers and their work. Ever since the invention of photography, photographers have been struggling with the common conception that a photograph can not be an original because its production is based on a mechanical process and an unlimited number of prints can be produced from the same negative (or digital file in this day and age). Unless a print is manually altered by the artist during the printing process a fine art print cannot be an original, fullstop.

Four Millions for a Photographic Print

It was in 2011 when Andreas Gursky’s work Rhein II, a large-scale photograph, was sold on auction for a little over $4 million (click here for a Wikipedia post about it). Being a world record for a contemporary photographic work people around the world shook their heads in disbelief. In fact I had the honour to work for Andreas in his atelier in Dusseldorf for some time prior to this milestone in his career as a contemporary artist. I had seen the development leading to this sale from a passenger view perspective and I knew it was just a matter of time for it to happen.

Scarcity

Now, everyone who knows a little about the background of this outstanding artist has to once more acknowledge that there is so much more that goes into a work of art that determines the price collectors are willing to pay for it in the end. However much known the story behind Rhein II and its creator Gursky is to most people, no one would seriously doubt that Gursky’s work was an original, but in fact it is as much an original than any photograph taken by any other artist at any time. Rhein II is a chromogenic print and it is the largest of a series of six total prints. Even though there is no doubt that a slide underlies a certain degree of wear, Gursky could have had hundreds, if not thousands of prints made from the same original slide. The fact that he had his lab only make six, however, introduced a scarcity that surely contributed significantly to buyers willing to raise their offers.
If Someone is an Artist, aren’t his or her Works Originals?
If people unconsciously make a difference between Gursky’s work and any other work from a lesser known artist, accepting the former as original and the latter not, I wonder if they actually make a difference in the status of an artist, whether that artist is a real artist or not. If you are as much an artist as Gursky is, then your work must be as much an original as his work, correct? Correct!

The Conceptual Process Creates the Originality

Of course, not every photograph is art in the common conception. But if the work an artist produces is the result of an artistic journey, both the artist’s journey as a whole and the creative creation process leading to the piece of work, the work that stands at the end of the creation process must be a work of art by definition. So if we accept someone’s status as an artist and we assume that his work is the result of a creative process where he takes from his own ideas and inspiration, then we have to acknowledge that every piece of art he/she creates is an original and must be treated and priced as such.

Back to the Initial Question

The Answer to the Initial Question whether a photograph is an original or a reproduction can only be: both.
It can be a reproduction if it serves documentary purposes or as a means for making an original available to a broader public. But it is an original if it is the result of a creative process by an artist and itself is based on the artist’s inspiration and creativity. How we treat this original, how much we want to sell it for and who we want to sell it to that is, depends on different factors every artist can influence to various degrees:

  • The artist’s reputation
  • The characteristics of the work
  • The scarcity (based on the edition)
  • Whether the artist still creates/whether he/she is still alive (to a lesser degree in this day and age)

The Artist is the Center of a Unique, Life-long Creative Process

Most artists keep working on their reputation during their entire life. Reaching a status where the art industry with all its curators, collectors and gallery owners recognise and pay tribute to them often takes decades, so there is no immediate action artists can take to increase the value of their current artwork. The characteristics of the work is an immediate result of the decisions an artist makes at the beginning and during the creative process. Materials, creation methods and size are the defining characteristics for an artwork and the most apparent for even uneducated viewers. Along with the immediate appearance of a piece of art goes its edition. The sales price an artist demands for his work is significantly influenced by the number of instances available for sale. That will almost always be a single one in the object-oriented arts (sculpture, printmaking) and can be a varying number in non-object oriented arts such as photography ranging from a few to a few thousand.

Do Limited Editions Turn Photographs into Art Originals?

To introduce scarcity into the equation where scarcity doesn’t exist by nature, fine art photographers limit their prints to a certain number of instances, often between 10 and 50. These limited edition prints are numbered and signed by the artist. By his/her signature and by adding the print’s unique number within the entire limited edition (for example 4/20 = print number 4 in a limited edition of 20 prints) the artist gives a promise to the buyer guaranteeing that there will never be any other prints available for sale other than the ones of the limited edition. Although there can be a variety of additional prints which won’t be part of the limited edition (artist print, printer’s proof and others), a buyer who buys from a limited edition invests into art that will gain value alongside the artist’s growing reputation and an increasing demand for his/her work.

The Arts as an Industry

After all, we must not forget that the arts industry works just in the same way than any other (luxury goods) industry. As an artist becomes more successful and builds his own unique brand over time, collectors and investors will become interested in his or her art, but eventually, this interest in the artist’s work, ideas, and philosophy will be substituted by an interest in the monetary value of the artwork (and the glamour that rubs off onto the buyer). A private collector who is able to acquire a high-priced work from a renowned artist may be more interested in ‘being part of it’ and being seen as such than in the artist’s ideas and inspirations. At a certain point the idea of return on investment replaces the genuine interest in the artist.

Artists Mentioned in this Post:

Abid Javed, Ceramics (abidjaved.org)
Boris Rothuber, Painting (borisrothuber.de)

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