(not) on exhibition prints

Brian Appel interview with Richard Prince. Not sure when it was done, but it wasn't too long ago, because Prince references preparing for the Guggenheim show.

Appel twice expresses admiration - excerpts below- that Prince doesn't make and exhibit new prints of his old photographs. Prince doesn't say anything about the upcoming Guggenheim show's heavy use of exhibition prints.

Brian Appel - Richard, I’ve always loved the fact that your photographic editions were so small. The cowboy image from the 16th of May was from an edition of two. Traditionally, fine art photographers think nothing of going back to their negatives ten, twenty, thirty or even forty years after the original exposures are made and use photographic materials that are completely removed from the original technological conditions from which the initial images were created – in effect producing pictures that are divorced from their time frame...

When I look at your photo based artworks I always know that the image I am looking at is a print done in close proximity to the original exposure. Your ‘copy’ of someone else’s ‘original’ is in effect ‘authentically vintage’...

Richard Prince - This was a choice I made back in 1980. I was treating the photograph as an object. Always thinking about the way it was presented....

Brian Appel - I’m always cautious when I look at a fine art photographic print – trying to decipher whether it’s a ‘vintage’ or ‘printed later’ print. But with your work, the prints are always locked into the act of the original exposure and carry with them the appropriate color aging and patina of prints made at the time of their creation.

RELATED:
- my post on first noticing all of the exhibition prints at the museum.
- Isabelle Graw, Reconsidering Prince, Dec 2007 - she talks about the use of exhibition prints in the Guggenheim show, and says the Living Rooms prints of 1977 (and others?) were produced in an enlarged format for the Guggenheim show. The originals were 20x24 Ektacolor prints, each an edition of ten. I don't recall exactly what the Guggenheim displayed.
- Nancy Spector on the decision to use exhibition prints.