Let’s return to our fictional photographer, Jeanne Valory, introduced in the first article. A collector writes to her estate: she owns a print of “Grues au crépuscule, Saint-Nazaire”, signed, numbered 4/10 in pencil, and would like to know how many other copies exist, and where.
The family has a list, typed in the 1990s: “Grues au crépuscule — edition of 10”. But is ten the number of copies printed, or the number announced? Are the two artist’s proofs everyone remembers included in the ten? And what became of the enlargements made for an exhibition in 1988?
None of these questions is about describing the image. They are about objects: what really exists, under which number, in whose hands. This article, the second in the series, goes through them.
Declaring an edition is not printing it
An edition is a promise: the author (or the estate) announces that an image will be printed in a limited number of copies, in a given format. The edition size is that announced number. The copies printed are the objects that exist.
The two often differ, and that is normal: an edition of 12 of which 3 copies have been printed is a common state. The others will be printed on demand, or never. A catalogue that records only “edition of 12” suggests that twelve prints are in circulation; a catalogue that lists only the three prints forgets that the edition promises nine more.
So both must be recorded: what the edition declares, and each copy actually printed. And also when an edition is closed: no further copy can be added to it, whatever happens. A collector needs that information and cannot guess it.
Kinds of edition
Not every print of an image has the same standing. The categories below are conventions of the market and of print studios, not legal definitions, but a catalogue raisonné must tell them apart:
- unique work: only one print exists, or ever will;
- limited edition: an announced number of copies, numbered (1/10, 2/10…);
- open edition: no announced limit;
- artist’s proof (AP, or EA in French): copies printed outside the edition, by convention kept by the author, numbered separately (AP 1/2, AP 2/2);
- printer’s proof: a copy that, by convention, goes to the printer or the lab;
- exhibition copy: a print made for a show, often in a format that belongs to no edition.
Artist’s proofs are not unimportant extras. They are sold, given away, they enter collections. If the catalogue does not list them, the edition looks smaller than it is.
A print’s number
The first article stressed how stable a work number must be. Each print needs its own, derived from the work’s: a print’s number should tell you which work it belongs to, which printing campaign, and its place in the edition. For instance, for work JV-0154:
JV-0154-P2-4/10: fourth copy of ten in the second printing sequence;JV-0154-P2-EA1/2: first of the two artist’s proofs of that sequence;JV-0154-P1: the single print of a first sequence.
The idea of a printing sequence is useful in photography: the same image can be printed in 1962 at the format of the time, then reissued in 1995 at another size, with its own numbering. They are not the same objects, and their numbers should show it.
That number has an awkward property: it may already be written on the object, in pencil, on the back of the print. Correcting it in the catalogue does not correct it on paper. If it turns out the edition really had 8 copies and not 10, that has to be recorded, the prints whose number no longer fits flagged, and a decision made whether to renumber them. It is a decision, not a side effect of an edit. And a print already cited by a document in circulation (a certificate, an invoice) keeps its number.
Describing a print as an object
A print is described the way a museum object is, not the way an image is:
- its dimensions, distinguishing image, sheet and mount. An image of 24 × 30 cm on a 30 × 40 cm sheet, mounted on 50 × 60 cm board: three measurements, none of which follows from the others;
- its process and paper: gelatin silver print on fibre-based paper, platinum-palladium print, pigment print on cotton paper, selenium toning;
- its printing date and period: a vintage print, made shortly after the exposure, is not a later print, made years afterwards by the author, nor a posthumous print, made after the author’s death, usually by or for the estate. All three can be legitimate; they are not interchangeable, and a collector will want to know which one they have;
- its signature and inscriptions: signed, unsigned, stamped, or bearing the estate stamp; where the signature is; what is written on the back;
- its condition: excellent, good, fair, poor, or not assessed, with a note that says why;
- its status and location: in stock, on consignment, on loan, sold, donated, lost, destroyed.
A print’s price and holder are sensitive. They belong in the catalogue, but not in everything that leaves it.
Provenance, gaps included
Provenance is the chain of custody of a work or a print: who held it, since when, and how it passed from hand to hand (sale, gift, bequest, deposit, loan). Each link has a date, with its precision (a year, a month, a day), a party handing it over and a party receiving it.
Three principles make provenance useful rather than decorative:
- The current location follows from the chain. If the last known event is a sale to a gallery in 2003, that is where the print is placed, for want of better. A location entered separately always ends up contradicting the chain.
- Gaps matter as much as entries. A print sold in 1979 that reappears at a public auction in 2012 has thirty-three years of unknown history. Saying so does not weaken the catalogue; hiding it does. A flagged gap is a research question; a hidden gap is a trap.
- A link without evidence is a claim. “Given by the artist to her printer, around 1980” may be true; until a letter, invoice or inscription supports it, it is a recollection, and the provenance should set it apart from a documented fact.
Provenance also involves people. A living collector may not want their name, let alone the price they paid, to appear in a document that gets passed around. In Europe, the GDPR governs the processing of such personal data. A catalogue raisonné must therefore be able to keep a provenance event confidential, and do so by default when one of the parties is a living person.
Exhibitions and publications
Exhibition history and bibliography are two of the things people consult a catalogue raisonné for. They share a feature: an exhibition or a book concerns several works at once. It is better to record each one once, as an entity of its own (title, venue, city, dates, type: solo, group, fair, biennial…), and to attach each work to it with what is specific to that work: its number in the exhibition catalogue, the room, the wall, the caption; or, for a book, the pages, the figure, the plate, and whether the work is reproduced or only mentioned.
Photography raises one more question: which print was shown? The 1988 exhibition copy, or the vintage print lent by a collector? When the answer is known, it is worth recording, because it belongs to the history of the object as much as to that of the work.
What others expect from it
A catalogue raisonné is not kept for oneself alone. Each of its readers looks for something specific:
- a collector wants to know which object they own: which work, which edition, which number, which printing period, which signature, which condition, and where it came from;
- a gallery wants the state of the edition: how many copies announced, how many printed, how many available, how many artist’s proofs, and whether the edition is closed;
- an insurer or a registrar wants dimensions, condition, location;
- an estate wants continuity: what was printed in the author’s lifetime and what after, which attributions are debated, and enough to answer questions without going through the boxes every time;
- a museum wants a record it can take into its own system, with identifiers it recognises. That is the subject of the next article.
Some tax, customs or legal questions about a photograph also turn on its copies. Neither the catalogue nor this article is there to answer them: they call for specialist advice, under the rules of the country concerned. But the catalogue is what supplies the facts: what was printed, when, how many, signed and numbered or not.
What we are building
In Obscura Catalog, the macOS app we are preparing, the print is an object in its own right, attached to its work, with its edition, a number derived from the work’s, its dimensions, process, signature and condition; provenance, exhibitions and publications are attached to the work they concern, and the people and organisations they mention form a single directory of agents. The glossary defines these terms, and the page The catalogue raisonné presents the whole.
In short
- An edition’s size is what it announces; prints are what exists. Record both, and say when the edition is closed.
- Artist’s proofs, printer’s proofs and exhibition copies are part of what exists: a catalogue that leaves them out understates the edition.
- A print’s number derives from the work’s and may be written on the object: change it only by an explicit decision.
- A print is described as an object: image, sheet and mount dimensions, process, printing period, signature, condition.
- Useful provenance follows from its chain, shows its gaps, separates evidence from claims, and protects living people.
Previous article: What is a catalogue raisonné, and why does a photographer need one?
Next article in the series: LIDO, CIDOC CRM, CSV: moving a catalogue without losing it