The art of printing: So who is the artist in the end?

It's been a long break since my last blog! I have been busy, however, attending workshops, meetings and stocking up on quite a lot of photography books and gear. It was during one of the sessions, on fine art printing with Chris Reid from BlancoNegro (btw, definitely recommended), when I hit one question which it was hard for me to find and accept the answer to. I thought it'd be good to bring it up here. It revolves around the concept of the art of printing. While I have always loved traditional printing and its magic, I don't think I've ever considered it as a stand alone art form. After all, to print you need to shoot a negative first. And so, logically, to me printing had always been just a finishing process in the art of shooting photography. Yes, you might have noticed right, I said “had”. But, mind you, it took me a few months of dwelling thoughts as I was getting by everyday life, and a few longer discussions with fellow photographers.

Up until earlier this year, I hadn't realised that basically every photograph required solid printing work. I've always liked to think that the whole magic happens fully inside the camera. Surely, you have to develop the film and print the negatives, but hey how much work that possibly can be? As a semi-purist I prefer to keep post-production to the bare minimum. This isn't something unheard of, many of us, including some big, legendary names in photography, have shared this particular view of minimal post-production. But now I learned, that even the best and most carefully exposed negatives still require burning and dodging. These are basic processes, but that's so much more than just adjusting contrast and brightness, really. Cropping the frame, dodging in one place, burning in the other, and the focus, feel and expression of the photograph can be changed and shifted dramatically. And in the end that's altering the photograph, transforming it from the pure reflection of the world into an art form that consciously acts on the viewer in a premeditated way. Granted, the raw negative is the foundation. If the negative doesn't have the soul, the print won't have it either. But a good raw photograph can be made 10x more powerful by the art of printing. Well, that's what I learned. So what is the question I struggled with the answers to?

In traditional photography, when one outsources the printing process to some external, professional place, who should be considered the artist that created the photograph?

[In contemporary digital photography that would be equivalent of outsourcing the digital post-production to professional labs.]

Copyright is not an issue here, I assume that the professional printing body was fully paid for the service and does not retain copyright. But owning the photograph and the copyright itself is a totally different matter to being the creator of the final piece of art. If the negatives are pretty bad, as in badly exposed, it will take some proper skill and time to make an award winning print of it. In the worst cases, I would consider spread of the work as at least 50%-50% between the photographer and the printer. So, if one contracts out half of the work in the creative photograph production, can they claim to be the sole artist? If a negative needs to be rescued in order to transform it into evocative photograph (which I would think is very important in e.g. photojournalism) then isn't it the printer that becomes the artist? Well, or at least shares the claim of artistry of the final photograph.

The question popped really when I started considering what makes a photograph documentary. How much change is allowed for the photograph to still be considered an unaltered view of the world around? Is post-processing considered altering the photograph? And hey - a lot can be done in a darkroom! Does something like "fine art documentary" photography even exist, or is every photograph a "fine art"? Of course, I assume here that every photograph needs to be printed. Sure, a lot of these questions touch on a completely different issue of photographic genres that is not the focus on this blog post, but the question -on who is the artist if printing is a major step in the production of final photograph- still stands.

I'm asking, because this seems to be hardly ever brought up. We hear of Henri Cartier-Bresson, but not the person who printed his legendary photographs. We hear of Man Ray, but not the printer who rescued his negatives and turned them into now highly acclaimed photographs. We hear of Walker Evans, but how many of us heard of John Hill? The list can go on.

Unfortunately, I don't have answer to the question.

I suppose since I'm not outsourcing the printing, but instead embracing it, the issue isn't a big deal for me. But I found the question interesting and not straightforward to answer. Heck, it took me long enough to actually understand the problem and formulate the question! Then I reached a big illuminating "Oh" moment at some point. But it started making sense. And then it left me massively overwhelmed, once I realised how much work I have to do to all my negatives. But hey, look at the results below!

Photograph: One of my fine art prints done at the BlancoNegro workshop. Copyright is fully mine, I'm the photographer, but the print was made by Chris Reid's hands, with him guiding me through the processes and allowing me to supervise it. So the credits should go to both of us I think!

Funny how always we randomly find stuff in the wide world webbing once the whole job is done. Or maybe only then we start noticing. But anyway, after the whole thought debate on the subject I came across these commentary pieces (link) from 11 years ago, on the reprinting photographs of Walker Evans for the exhibition at the UBS Art Gallery. Adds a voice to the discussion.

#printing #art