Black & White Printing by photographer or separate printer

If a photographer prints his own negatives, can this be matched or improved by another printer in sympathy with what the photographer is trying to achieve? Or does this require a Lennon and McCartney sympathy, which maybe quite unobtainable?

An excellent printer can certainly improve a photograph. Sometimes a printer can see something in a negative that the photographer did not. Being a good photographer does not necessarily mean one is a good printer or cares to work in the darkroom. But when a photographer is also a good printer, he or she can usually communicate to a printer what he wants the print to look like.

Penn printed all his own work, Avedon did not. Both kept tight control of the process.

I've printed for others. It can really help to bring to the task a sensibility that is not immediately influenced by the perspective of having taken the original photograph - essentially a new and fresh set of eyes.
Sometimes you are told by the photographer just to make the print you think is best. Sometimes it is a constructive collaboration. And sometimes you have very specific direction.
The quality of the results that come from the latter two approaches is highly dependent on the quality of communication. Some photographers are far better with images than any sort of words. I like to think I'm reasonably effective with both.

Is one apple bigger than another? It all depends...

cliveh said:

Or does this require a Lennon and McCartney sympathy, which maybe quite unobtainable?

Click to expand...

Unobtainable, no. But it takes time to build such a relationship, which explains why at least some photographers keep coming back to the same printer.

In the end, the main question of course is whether the photographer considers printing to be part of their own artistic process, or whether it can be outsourced. Not so much a question of who does it better, but of the essence of one's work.