Procedural

4/15/2004. From a letter.

I put tech info on my prints for my own reference later, and to avoid any trace of auteur-hauteur sentimentality. I figure if they're framed the mat will cover it up. Same goes for signing. Any college-boy interest I had in first editions and limited editions and signed editions evaporated long since; what's important is the thing itself, not whether Picasso mixed the paint with his own spit.

True, I signed some photos we sent to Chris's friend in Miami a year or two ago for some church benefit, but only because they asked for it.

Mind you, there is a reason to want to see originals (or "originals"), even with photos, since no two prints of the same photo are quite alike, and some are very different indeed, 'specially if they're printed years apart and with different equipment. If the same guy is in charge of printing them, you can see trends in his thinking, as in G. Gould's early and late recordings of the Goldberg Variations.

Certainly I'm glad I've had the chance to see, in NYC, photos actually printed by Weston and Ansel Adams and Gene Smith and many others. Often the prints have qualities you just don't get in reproductions, qualities of luminosity and bronzing and foxing and tones. I always felt that one of Henri C-B's few shortcomings was his lack of interest in the photo once it was taken.