As far as I know, none of the great photographers who printed limited
editions destroyed their negatives. There is something intrinsically
wrong with that notion. The negative or the digital original must
always be preserved. All of my gallery prints are numbered prints of a
limited edition. They are a far cry from fine art, but buyers want to
konw that their print is not just one of many. Iif I ever sell the
entire series of an image, which is highly unlikely, I will stop
printing that shot. But I won't destroy the original file or negative.
My best selling print, by the way, is from film. But I hope that will
soon change.
Paul
On May 1, 2006, at 11:32 PM, Aaron Reynolds wrote:
The only ethical way of doing a limited edition is to make your print
run, then destroy the masters. That way your buyers can be at least
assured that any future print has to be a reproduction of one of the
originals, and thus not worth as much. Please note that you can do a
run
of 100, sell 10 of them, and still have 90 squirreled away in a box to
sell in the future.
Of course, this does not apply at all to the situation at hand, where
there are actual conventions to be obeyed that will not change just
because you don't like 'em or think they have problems. Like I said
previously, no one in the art community really gives a damn what the
PDML comes up with -- they have their way of doing things, and you can
either join in or not join in, but standing off to the side and
telling them how wrong they are will not get you anywhere, and surely
will not increase your sales.
-Aaron
