Certificates of Authentication

MattKing said:

The point is that the Gallery and the agent were instrumental in causing the printed work to come into being, and it was they that were instrumental in managing the distribution to initial buyers, so they were perfect parties to both issue and track, if necessary, certificates of authenticity.

Click to expand...

Unless the photographer is deceased, the certificate should be issued and signed by him, not a third party.

stevenje said:

I was looking at Tim Rudman’s website and noticed his prints came with a certificate of authentication.

For the members out there that sell prints, do you have certificates of authentication for your prints?

How important is it and is it really necessary?

How are the certificate of authentication records kept so they are searchable and verifiable?

Thanks.

Click to expand...

I think the answer depends on who is buying your prints, and where. Who: if your buyers are used to buying from galleries then they will expect a certificate of authenticity, so you'd better provide one. Where: my understanding is that certificates of authenticity are required by law in certain jurisdictions for art sales, e.g. California, New York (someone more knowledgable than me could probably confirm or correct that).

Ian Leake said:

I think the answer depends on who is buying your prints, and where. Who: if your buyers are used to buying from galleries then they will expect a certificate of authenticity, so you'd better provide one. Where: my understanding is that certificates of authenticity are required by law in certain jurisdictions for art sales, e.g. California, New York (someone more knowledgable than me could probably confirm or correct that).

Click to expand...

Some galleries require a signed certificate of authenticity stating the photographer, title, size, medium, and edition number.

Seems like a frivolous practice. No - they're absolutely NOT required in California for photographic prints, or anywhere else I'm aware of. There are legal conditions to what can be sold as an actual painting or true lithograph, versus mass-produced alternatives. It would be easy enough to fake a "Certificate of Authenticity" for just about anything anyway. It happens all the time, for some kind of product or another. Even very very expensive galleries have been caught doing that.

But as an optional feature, such certificates might accompany limited edition portfolios, etc.
What individual galleries require as business policy is up to them. But if a living photographer is directly involved, that should be sufficient in its own right. Once things get marketing silly, I begin suspecting the ethics of the gallery itself.

Anyone with sufficient experience should be able to discern in person a skillfully printed real photographic print from a mass mechanical version or the work of a fraudster. Whether that is being done under the photographer's authorization or not, or that of his trust, might involve a bit of extra paperwork, as in a case like the AA Trust, where questionable works have brought on lawsuits. But in that case, the prints in question looked inferior anyway - a different past photographer of Yosemite, quite skilled for his era, but devoid of the same level of poetic sensitivity. I saw through that immediately, just by the nature of composition. Even in AA's early photographs, as technically deficient as many of them were, there was already a germ of that brilliant signature handling of light to follow. Just using the same kind of glass plates, or then film, around the same time, for the same type of subject matter, doesn't equate to being the same thing.

In a past life, I sometimes had to sleuth painting fraud using the copystand techniques of those days - infrared light, TechPan film etc. Once I discovered 19th C underpainting of something equivalents to "Dogs with Cards" beneath a faux Old Masters oil painting. I could spot the ruse anyway, from clear across the room instantly, due to its sheer inferiority of technique and composition. But let's imagine it was a well done fake; and in that case paying me a few hundred dollars for a simple evaluation made a lot of sense before spending thousands and waiting many months for the opinion of an expert.

BrianShaw said:

Look again, the issuer and authenticator is stated on the certfiicate: Chroma Colour, the printer.

Click to expand...

Yes, you're right. I missed that.

Alan Edward Klein said:

Who issued that sample of CofA? There's no one listed? So who's authenticating it? Without that, there is no authentication as far as I can tell.

Click to expand...

The authenticator/issuer is ChromaColour, South Australia, the Ilfochrome Classic print business. This information is on the dark background rectangle at the bottom in small print (in later times bigger and clearer to read).

PW is the initial of Paul Weibach, one of three master printers at the time and being a printer, the only person authorised to initial the card – he made the print, he signs it. This sample CofA is trash because it contains two incorrect file numbers to a single image (slide) – garbled by a finishing room assistant.

In 2008 these Certificates were transferred to full digital production, but the Printer always wrote his initials – not scanned images of initials or names that could be slapped on anything and anywhere. You could say around that time it was just fancy, maybe frivolous window-dressing – patching leaks in the Titanic, if you will! Then came the QC debacles of 2009 and finally the axe in 2010... the rest is really sad history. Just like Kodachrome...

No wonder I feel underwater, clinging to my Cibachromes. At least I was both the photographer and the printmaker, so nobody needed any print authentication at the Gallery opening.

DREW WILEY said:

At least I was both the photographer and the printmaker, so nobody needed any print authentication at the Gallery opening.

Click to expand...

As I was.
If I felt it (self-signing a certificate) looked a bit suss (still do), I would have another printer initial the certificate for me.

Taylor K Nankervis said:

As I was.
If I felt it (self-signing a certificate) looked a bit suss (still do), I would have another printer initial the certificate for me.

Click to expand...

I certainly don't use or provide them, because if I did it really would be "suss"
But if I was a participant in the market that values them, I would certainly consider selling such a certificate if I were both the photographer and darkroom printer who created the result.

DREW WILEY said:

No wonder I feel underwater, clinging to my Cibachromes. At least I was both the photographer and the printmaker, so nobody needed any print authentication at the Gallery opening.

Click to expand...

One of the purposes of a certificate of authenticity is to state the edition number as well as the print number in that edition, something that could affect the value of the print.

MattKing said:

I certainly don't use or provide them, because if I did it really would be "suss"
But if I was a participant in the market that values them, I would certainly consider selling such a certificate if I were both the photographer and darkroom printer who created the result.

Click to expand...

Yup. Real gone suss.


Have to remember this was 15 years back, but it went at least 20 years further back still. Times have changed. A lot! Even the market has changed. Today, years afterward, I do not know of any photographers locally who provide a Certificate of Authenticity (or for that matter, if they have heard of such a thing, many being late-1990s of vintage!), or even proof that they are the actual photographer!
I don't provide them for my own work (that ceased when Ilfochrome printing went belly-up).

Anybody can produce a giclée, RA4 or darkroom print that is then scanned and run through Fauxtoshoppe to mimic some big-time 'tog. But well-oiled skills and training and attention to quality and finishing are required to produce an Ilfochrome Classic print, hence a major point of appeal (and prestige) for the Certificates.

Reckon on it being just as good today putting a verso label on the finished frame, detailing the name, description, print number, edition etc., and sign it.

Number of editions? Laughable. Very few "editions" of actual photographic prints are actually made, or exist, as per entire quantity. That's largely just marketing bait. What has become more common practice, and sensibly so, is to offer a certain small number of prints at one price, and once that quantity has finally been printed and sold, then the next limited round is hypothetically set at a higher price tier, and so forth, until the specific image is finally tops out and is retired.

Most of the time when one sees "limited edition" labeling it's actually something mass-manufactured by a third party. Basically bait.

And in terms of great Cibachrome prints of the past, that's evident on its own. No one needs a label telling one so. That's what eyes are for. And just how many of those of any given image are going to turn up anyway? I rarely made more than two of any given Ciba image per size, often only one. Six at the most. I've more recently redone a handful of those same images in Fujiflex Supergloss. That's inherently a lot of work darkroom-style; but the distinction from laser generated prints is apparent on close inspection, especially when large format originals are involved.

There have been times when I sold the sole print of a particular image exclusively to a single client at a significantly higher price, and then instantly retired the film original. This has occurred with both Cibas and black and white work.

I'm far more interested in moving on to new images rather than just cranking out more of the
same thing. Only a small percentage of even my "best" chromes or color negs have ever been printed. I've kept up a little better with b&w negs.

Maybe it's time for a reality check. Certificates of Authenticity only matter to collectors, galleries and the photographers who sell to collectors. I am willing wager that the number of participants in this discussion and on this forum who actually do that is minuscule. So, it's a bunch of blow-hards discussing hypothertical pipe dreams.

Pieter12 said:

So, it's a bunch of blow-hards discussing hypothertical pipe dreams.

Click to expand...

Well, you've been hanging out here for 8 years...

I do know there are members of this forum that sell to collectors and galleries and have representation.

The ones I know of are not commenting in this thread, though.

Most b&w prints you see for sale are either signed or stamped on the back.

Don_ih said:

Well, you've been hanging out here for 8 years...

I do know there are members of this forum that sell to collectors and galleries and have representation.

The ones I know of are not commenting in this thread, though.

Most b&w prints you see for sale are either signed or stamped on the back.

Click to expand...

Does that make me a blow-hard? Quite possibly. But I have sold to collectors (not much) and have issued Certificates of Authenticity (ditto). I would love to really know who has gallery representation and whose work is in collections other than their immediate family and friends.

Maybe someone should smoke a peace pipe instead of speculating who does or doesn't comprise a real collector, which is really the gist of the issue, whether or not a secondary gallery was involved. I have been involved with fine art galleries; and they certainly didn't give a damn about any "certificates", as if those were printed coupons on cereal boxes. The flavor inside the picture frame is way way more important to discerning collectors.

Yeah, I know, there are those who are really more interested in the signature on a print than the print itself. Those are the types who buy what they are told to collect by someone else because they can't trust their own eyes or judgment yet. Pitiful.

And if something is allegedly a valuable vintage work, or antique, having a documented chain of custody might enhance its value. That rarely translates into actual benefit to the artist themselves, who would be long dead by then.

Pieter12 said:

Maybe it's time for a reality check. Certificates of Authenticity only matter to collectors, galleries and the photographers who sell to collectors. I am willing wager that the number of participants in this discussion and on this forum who actually do that is minuscule. So, it's a bunch of blow-hards discussing hypothertical pipe dreams.

Click to expand...

Welocme to Photrio.