signing prints (made with Leicas and otherwise)

["Edward Gosfield III, MD" <gosfield@dolphin.upenn.edu>]

Hi all

A. Adams, John Sexton, Brett Weston, Bruce Barnbaum, Paul Caponigro, (and if
i remember right, H.C-B, to keep this vaguely on topic) and many other
famous and successful fine art photographers sign their prints ONLY in
pencil, in the lower portion of the mounting board in the margin.  Adams
gives instructions for this in "The Print".  Signing on the back is
generally discouraged 1)due to the danger of embossing the print and 2)due
to the fact that most people can't see the signature when the print is
displayed if it is signed on the back.  Ballpoint pen is particularly
discouraged.

There is a bit of a controversy in the gallery business about whether one
should dry-mount prints at all, since extremely expensive art works are
often not mounted in this way for archival purposes. The folks noted above
make/made their livings selling prints and do/did fine dry-mounting.  If
your prints sell for over $10,000 a piece i guess you should seriously
ponder this issue, with the advice of your gallery manager, or corporate art
acquisition consultant, of course.

Some people (Barnbaum, Alan Ross, at least) put a rubber stamp impression on
the back of the drymount, with lines for filling in  date, subject, title,
artist's name, etc.  India ink is considered archival for this purpose, but
sometimes even the dreaded ballpoint pen is used.  Conceivably some
unscrupulous person could carefully (and with luck) unmount the print and
switch mounting boards, but i haven't heard of this.  If you are as famous
as, say, Edward Weston or Charles Scheeler or some other dead photographer,
perhaps it might be worth it for someone to counterfeit your material by
inserting on your mount stamp a phony 'vintage' date, or some other
modification to the desireablility of a particular image.

It is safer and easier to handle mounted prints than unmounted, and you have
the addded advantage of being able to 'set' the amount of white space you
like around your images (or gray or black space if you like colored boards).

I've only been in one show, and my stuff was dry-mounted and signed as
above, and i am not famous. No one has asked me to exhibit my Leica stuff,
but i was asked to exhibit my LF stuff.  I usually enlarge Leica negs to 5x7
(mounted on 11x14 boards, which gives 'em a certain increased...ummm...
dignity), occasionally 8x10.  That keeps the edge definition in the same
realm as LF work.  But unless you are famous it makes the viewer think they
aren't getting as much for their money ;^)

Here's hoping you make many satisfying images and have to buy your own dry
mount press.  About the same price as a mint-ish DR 50mm if you want to
mount 16x20.

best wishes

ted gosfield





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