Re: How Many Members Still Print Their Own Photography?
anthonygh wrote:
I remember taking my daughter to an Ansel Adams exhibition in London some years ago. She had looked through my photo books and seen some of his work on line…but viewing the actual prints amazed her. She was stunned..
First of all, I’m with you on the value of prints and the differences between seeing photographs as prints and on screens.
I’ve had a few experiences like your daughter had over the years.
I had heard of the photographer Jeff Wall (probably known more in the “art” world than among photographers, oddly) in books, so I was aware of some of his work. It left me somewhat mystified. Then I saw a wonderful exhibition of his (monumental) prints at SF MoMA many years ago, and I was knocked out by them. I recall spending a half hour with one of them, thinking about how it was constructed and what it contained.
I had a similar experience the first time I saw Avedon’s “American West” photographs — a completely different experience than seeing them in books, much less online. (They are also huge.)
Another benefit of seeing prints is that you may see different versions of a photographer’s work, where we quite often only see one version in books and online. Adams is a fine example here. His interpretations of his prints were not static — they changed significantly over his career. Two examples… More than two decades ago I saw an exhibit (I believe it was in Anchorage) that showed the transition in how he printed his famous Denali photograph, gradually moving towards higher contrast tand a more graphical interpretation. A different exhibit (in the SF Bay Area) focused on his very earliest prints, and they also look quite different from the versions that we are familiar with.
If the photographer regards or regarded his/her work to exist in prints, then it is prints we should see in order to understand the photographer’s vision.
Feb 09, 2026 at 03:46 PM
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