Alan is a serious photographer and printmaker in his own right, but by being directly associated with AA
he also knows how to interpret the negs faithfully and, despite AA bequeathing such raw material to the whims oif posterity, prints them to look as if Ansel himself would have done it. After all, that was his coach. Value-wise, these are just a commodity, a valuable source of income to the trust, but only marginally collectable - not anything like a vintage print. As decor, they probably "feel" more authentic than a picture mass-printed by mechanical means. Quite a few of us can probably print better than AA
could - we've got better papers and a bigger toolbox of tricks (some of which he taught us!). But not
many people have his poetic sensibility too. There is a lot more to his finished images than just "grand
landscapes" or outdoor "romanticism", to employ a nonsense term favored by mouldy urban critics of
his style.