The Essential Value of the Photo Print

   Back in December, when we were all rushing to organize Christmas gifts, I helped a friend order a canvas print for his father. It was a photograph he made of his father’s horse, and he was going to frame the print with barn wood he had found in the countryside. When the print arrived, he was thrilled. He messaged me a snapshot from his phone, expressing his excitement and how impressed he was with the beauty and quality of the print. "It made the photograph come alive." My response: “a photograph is never complete until it’s printed.” While that might not be true in every circumstance - seeing that many photographs are never meant to move beyond social media and news platforms - I do believe there is some truth in my claim.

   This article is about what I believe to be the essential value of the print, which is its aesthetic experience. As an artist, I know that artworks are made to be experienced. I’d even say that the artwork is the artist’s expression of their inward experience of life, manifested outwardly through a physical embodiment for others to experience as well. The print, similarly, is the photographer’s embodied vision for the photograph; the epitome and ultimatum, ready to be fully experienced once it has reached this conclusion. Ideally, the print is the photograph finally produced precisely the way the photographer meant for it to be seen, for viewers to experience the photograph just as the photographer had imagined. That is what makes the photographic print a satisfactorily collectible object, as there is no better way to experience the work.

"The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways." – Ansel Adams

   The photograph will never look the same on a screen as it does in print, and when most visual media we consume is delivered to us through the Internet, the great majority of your audience will never experience your work at its finest. From iPhones and Androids, to 15” laptop screens and imperfect monitors, electronic displays cripple the fullest experience of the piece. Likely fewer than 5% of the people viewing your work view it on a calibrated display. Even for those that do, we must consider the difference between one display and the next. Monitors differ in screen size, resolution, contrast ratio, color depth, pixel pitch, PPI, and panel type, all affecting the way your photograph looks. Granted the possibility that two people have the same screen, it is unlikely that they calibrate their displays the same way.

   Furthermore, size does matter. If your audience is primarily viewing your work over their phone, through Instagram or Facebook, the amount of the detail they will witness in your work is limited. My newest work is created to be printed at a large scale, so 27” monitors barely capture the likeness of my vision. However, even a 10” print reveals a stunning amount of detail compared to my tiny 6” mobile screen, and that is visual performance that many of my 1,900 followers may never witness until they see the print. Differences in screen quality exist between phone models, whose screens also degrade in image quality with age and use. Virtually everyone viewing your work across the Internet is experiencing a visibly different representation of your work.

"Fine art prints created by the artist, or the artist’s collaborator, are important because they best represent the artist’s vision. Images displayed on digital devices are subject to the non-uniform nature of different displays and they may appear radically different then the artist intended." – Mac Holbert

   Display quality aside, we interact with artwork and photographs differently on the Internet than we do in person. Our browsers typically have several tabs open at once, and it’s hard to keep ourselves updated with all the new images on our Instagram feeds if we don’t keep scrolling. Our attention span over social media is notably short, but social media platforms are where our work is primarily displayed. The Internet doesn’t make it easy for us to have an intimate experience with our visual content when so many distractions abound. Not that we should be staring at our screens for too long, anyway. The very fact that we’re staring straight into the emitted light of an electronic device, as opposed to the much softer light reflected off the surface of a print, doesn’t lend itself well to a pleasurably refined experience. And when it comes to viewing artwork, it is all about the experience.

   The answer lies in the print. Printing means that the photographer chooses precisely how he wants the print to appear, in accordance to how he envisioned the photograph’s appearance. As said before, the print is the unchanging physical embodiment of the author’s vision. It is permanent and democratic; everyone who sees it, sees it as it is, with no discrepancy between displays. And unlike the temporal nature of the Internet, the print can hang in the same place for long periods of time. This is a major benefit.

"The print is an idea made visible. For my process, a photograph isn’t a photograph until it’s a print. I love the physical presence of a print, from beginning to end. For me it’s a tactile, sensual experience. I want it to be an object of beauty, whether the subject moves you or not." – Tillman Crane

   For those of you who own paintings, or frequent a favorite museum, or anywhere you might pass an artwork during your daily routine, you may have realized that its very possible to build a relationship with your favorite pieces. Your enjoyment of a particular piece can increase overtime, as your experience of the piece is enriched with repeated exposure. You might pick up on forms, details, and colors that you hadn’t noticed before. It can appear differently in the context of the seasons and over the years of a viewer’s life, changing in appearance depending on your mood cycles or gradual shifting in your perspective on life. In contrast to the immediacy of Internet, where images appear static and we likely become bored if we stare too long, the print becomes a rather active object by means of a more tranquil interaction through the longevity of the relationship between the viewer and the piece.

   Paper and developing processes also present the photographer with one final creative interpretation. There are hundreds of different paper types on the market, different darkroom printing techniques, and even when printing from a digital file, several different ink options propose nuances of expression for the photographer to work with. My “Penalty Box” print, while displaying a wide range of rich monochromatic tones when printed on a Baryta semi-gloss paper, didn’t have the same charm as when it was printed on matte paper. I found that the matte paper imitated the matte surface of a chalkboard, really bringing the chalk in my photograph to life.

   Although photographic prints are a flat media, experiencing the photograph as a print is still much more engaging than on a screen. And even if it can’t muster as much depth as a painting, experiencing the physicality of a print can very rewarding. Different lighting throughout the day, picking up on textures and details from different angles, and just being able to watch a print shape shift from across the room as the mind wanders in thought, can be a personally rewarding experience. And while photographers typically aren’t thought to have as much interaction with a print as painters do with paintings, I would still love to get my hands on a print by Man Ray or Ansel Adams. Knowing that such an artist’s or craftsman’s authentic presence was involved in creating, handling, and signing the print is still just as exciting.

   In the end, when acquiring a print, you know you hold the fullest aesthetic experience of the photographer’s vision - something you can indulge in over and over again. And if it’s an image that you love, you would only want to experience it at its fullest.

"I consider it essential that the photographer should do his own printing and enlarging. The final effect of the finished print depends so much on these operations." – Bill Brandt

   I printed and framed a 20” print of my popular “Penalty Box” piece, which I then donated to my favorite mom-and-pop coffee shop. I like to believe that the photograph’s presence adds something to the unique culture of that place, and have even made a sale of another print in that same edition because visitors fell in love with what they were seeing. I believe every photographer should print their finest photographs.

Best regards,
John Dykstra