Ansel Adams Prints

Ansel Adams prints can be very hard to come by. As with most art (possible exceptions being “dogs playing poker” which has always been so bad that overprinting couldn’t possibly hurt) too much exposure lessens the value of even the original. It’s no different with Ansel Adams prints. The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust keeps a fairly tight grip on the licenses they grant to individuals for making full Ansel Adams prints.

But you can find Ansel Adams art everywhere, some people say. Yes, and almost all of it consists of Ansel Adams posters and not fully authorized prints. To understand the difference between an Ansel Adams poster and an Ansel Adams print you need to know just a little something about printing in general.

The first difference between prints and posters has to do with the paper, or support used. Posters will use a far cheaper quality rather normal paper, whereas a print will use a material that is both acid free which is termed archival. An archival support (often a material called rag) with the right sorts of inks is named a glycee. Anything less is not a true print.

Then there are inks. Ansel Adams prints will be done with pigmented ink and should be lightfast. This means that the ink should not lose it’s appearance even if exposed to light for long periods of time. Most inks used in printing are not true pigmented inks, nor are they lightfast. Between these two major materials, the difference between a print and a poster is found.

So on the low end of the scale you have a poster (even though Ansel Adams posters can differ in quality), on the other end you have true Ansel Adams prints. Somewhere in between there is the nebulous “art print” which uses higher quality inks and paper than the poster, but is still not up to the archival and lightfast precision of a glycee.

A true print has value just as the original has value. In the world of photography where even originals are in some way prints, the Ansel Adams print can have tremendous value. A first edition print from one of Ansel Adams printings fetched more than 600,000 dollars at a Southeby’s auction, and the entire printing commanded over 25 million dollars total.

You probably aren’t surfing the web looking for a first edition Ansel Adams print. But you very well might be looking for a modern print run as a move up from the more readily available Ansel Adams poster market. Also keep in mind that art prints can be a good alternative since they are nearly glycee quality and will still cost much less than a true print.

Now you know a little more about the difference between an Ansel Adams print and an Ansel Adams poster. Be sure to keep the technical terms above fixed in your mind as you search – it will help you make sure that what you are buying is a true print or art print and not just a poster after all.