I have seen a lot of photo exibitions and there are really no rules. On one end among the simplest was someone who printed black and white prints from snapshop cameras on regular laser printer on an artist-run gallery. On the other there are large scale inkjet printed and framed inket prints that sells numbered and signed prints from works of world known photographers for price of 50000 USD pr print (for example David Bailey). On the latter the photographer doesnt seem to be so involved in the printing, itis handled by specialised companies that does this sort of thing. The artists gives the signature. Darkroom silver prints isnt common, I usually see that only in historical exhibitions or in photographers that are also committed to the printing process (such as Dag Alveng in norway, he is a master of large format process). Printing gives quite a large leeway for influencing the output, but there seems to be few contemporary photographers that does much out of it. Mastering darkroom printing doesnt seem to be much valuated in the artworld, most gallerists seems to be pretty green about the process and doesnt really understand the conceptual differences between an inkjet print, a lambda digital silver gelatin print, and a darkroom print from a negative.
One of the most impressive exhibitions from a well known star photographer, for example, was a retrospective by Anton Corbijn in Berlin. They displayed original lith-prints presumably made by Mike Spry, his long time printer that was a master of this process. They where great. It really opened my eyes for the process. Last year i saw another exhibition of Corbijn in Oslo, but they had none of the lith originals only what appeared as digital inkjet prints. I was dissapointed, it was meh.
