[Leica] Is Eggleston in the right? What is the meaning of "limited edition"?

[jayanand at gmail.com (Jayanand Govindaraj)]

Never sell limited edition, you are only supporting the secondary market,
where all the profits go to the investor and his pimp (art dealer). As an
artist your interest is only with the primary market, where the moolah
flows to your pocket!:

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2013/04/limited-edition-photographs.html

Cheers
Jayanand


On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 7:24 AM, Adam Bridge <abridge at mac.com> wrote:

> I read this article over on Digital Photography Review about William
> Eggleston's issuance of a large-format (44 x 60) ink-jet print set of a
> previous limited edition dye transfer print (11 x 17).
>
> He was sued by a collector who claimed that the new prints reduced the
> value of his dye transfer prints which were "limited edition."
>
> The judge found that Eggleston had created an "essentially different" work
> from the same transparency and so was within his rights.
>
> I'm uncomfortable with this and I've wrestled in my own mind about what
> constitutes a "limited edition" in a digital world. I think we've talked
> about it here.
>
> I have a Robert Bateman lithograph that was produced in limited edition.
> Now he sells the same print but as an inkjet print. My lithograph is worth
> (given the current market) an order of magnitude more than the inkjet print
> . . . but I have this strange feeling. If I owned the original oil that
> Bateman produced I wouldn't feel this way: he could only make one of these
> - at least not without a host of Chinese "starving" (perhaps literally)
> artists doing duplicates.
>
> I understand that many of Ansel's prints weren't made directly by Ansel
> but by those under his supervision. But they were not mass produced. I have
> the feeling that for every print that made it out of the darkroom there
> were many "failures." Maybe I'm wrong. And I don't think Ansel claimed to
> do limited editions although I could be completely wrong on this.
>
> But now, when we work entirely in digital, when any number of copies can
> be made at very small cost, does having a limited edition make any sense at
> all? Would you destroy an original RAW file (for example) to guarantee that
> you'd done a limited edition?
>
> I'm left with a bad feeling. Maybe he wants a new M?
>
> Anyway, am I off base here? What are your thoughts?
>
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