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What do you do with your prints?

logan2z

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Jan 11, 2019
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Location
SF Bay Area, USA
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I've been spending a lot of time in the darkroom lately catching up on a backlog of printing. I'll spend hours, sometimes over the course of multiple days, working on a print to get it where I want it. Once it's done it inevitably ends up in a print storage box and rarely sees the light of day again. I frame some but it's not practical to frame and hang them all. I've shown some locally but that doesn't last long and then they're back in a box.

I'm reminded of an interview with Garry Winogrand in which he mentioned talking to Robert Frank about him giving up still photography and Frank asking Winogrand 'What do you do with all of it?'

So, what do you do with all of the prints you make? Store them? Hang as many as possible on your walls? Give them as gifts? Sell them?
 
Store them?

Yup, the large majority of them.

Hang as many as possible on you walls?

Nope. I have maybe a half dozen of my own photographs on the walls. Many fewer than of other art work, by other folks... mainly watercolors and mainly by acquaintances and family

Give them as gifts?

Yup... quit a few, basically to anyone who admires one! I also do an annual winter solstice edition of a dozen or so small prints which I send instead of holiday cards. I stole this idea from David Vestal. A few of these are matted, but most (including the winter solstice prints) are not.

Sell them?

Yes, but I don't really market at all. My usual sale is to a friend of a friend and not for a whole lot of money... usually $25 for an 8x10 and $40,for an 11x14. These are bare prints... no matting or framing I tell folks who ask for a framed print that I'm a photographer, I'm not in the framing business. Then I point them in the direction of a friend who is in the framing business!

The bottom line is that I make photographs for me. It is the the journey that is important to me, not the destination.

However, it is certainly a nice feeling when someone likes a photograph I made enough that they want a print to hang on the wall!
 
Gather the ones that haven't been sold into two sets and give them to my boys...equal number of platinum prints and carbon prints...they can deal with them. Two boxes for the longish series of the boys from newborns onwards to high school (SX-70s until they could crawl, then 8x10 until they ran off). Some more 'historic' 16x20 silver gelatin prints from the 80s/early 90s...need to separate out the selenium toned finals from the almosts. Negatives in boxes? -- shit...I'll separate out the 8x10s of the boys. Perhaps a box of each format of negatives actually printed, or wish I had. Don't know what the boys would do with those.

I'll put it on my to-do list.
 
Like the OP, I have many prints that I'm very pleased with but until the day I move into a mansion (which won't be this week) I don't have the space to display anything but a fraction of them. Even framing and rotating them means that there's storage issue both in terms of space and deterioration due to the damp Devon climate. Hence a large number are stored in acid-free envelopes and then packed in sealed boxes with hefty pack of silica gel. Probably the most satisfaction I get, as per fgorga above, is when someone admires one of my prints (usually they have poor eyesight and the lighting is dimmed!) and I print and frame a copy for them.

Steve
 
I have my permanent portfolio, storage boxes for all those prints that don't make it into the portfolio, the absolute best images are generally framed and hung on the walls of my home, I have a rather long strip up on one wall where I can run a rotating "gallery", I give some away, and MANY wind up in the recycle bin.
 
Had a couple of realizations about prints over the years.

Once, when viewing an exhibit of Edward Weston's work, I was surprised that they were generally not large: IIRC, most were either 8x10 or 5x7 contact prints. And I was charmed by their brilliance and clarity when viewed at close range. In fact, when I purchased a new photo printer last year, I decided to concentrate on high quality yet small prints, and that's what I've been doing, just 4x6 and 5x7 so far, just enjoyed as-is. There's plenty of detail to be seen, even if you need to view them up close.

On another occasion, I was in a paper store, and on display were art prints depicting the seasons, and it got me thinking how fine it would be to change the art to complement the passing of the seasons. And how much easier this is to accomplish if prints are not encased in rigid frames which don't store especially well.
 
I have a few backing mat and window mat combinations that are assembled in such a way as to permit easy swapping in and out of standard size prints. Those combinations fit easily in a few frames that also make it easy to swap things in and out.
All of which makes it easy to put things up on the wall in order to live with them a bit.
The quick swap mats show a bit of wear after a while, but when a print passes the "on the wall for a while" test, they can always be more carefully matted and displayed.
With all due respect to Alan, I much prefer prints and projected slides to images on a monitor.
 
Slide shows on my computer screen are very good, better than the TV. But it's easier to gather around the TV when there are a few people. It's much more relaxing sitting in a recliner watching a 75" TV with a sound bar playing embedded music while munching on candy and having a drink. Nothing wrong with projected images. I used to do them years ago as well.
 
I Matt all my prints... sign them and edition them for sale... I do not keep any prints that I do not like and I keep true to the edition, and keep track of all sales.
 
Just as Winogrand I use prints to see how things looks like been photographed.
It is the only purpose. I do show some of them, some of them are given and in private collections around the world. I’m not seller, it is not my thing. I’m worker.
 
I print the ones I'm interested in, as 8x10.
Then I relook at all the 8x10's and move the really nice ones into the "reprint as 20x24 pile".
The 8x10's get stored in a box from that year's work.
The 20x24's I frame.
I currently have two shows framed and ready to hang. One of the shows (5x7 prints of street work) was shown at a gallery last year that focused on street photography. The second group (8x20's shot on a 4x10 camera of street portraits) was supposed to be shown in April, but now that show is moved to next April because of covid.
I think the gallery show is my favourite outlet for work. Books and magazines are nice but I like the gallery best.
 
Do you have online images of the photos that will be in your shows?
 
I just put 'em in a box. I enjoy the process of making a print, after the print is made the photography part is over.
 
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