Editioning photographic prints acts against the precise qualities and characteristics of photography that make it an interesting and unique medium to make, look at, and own.
 
Editioning very rarely adds anything creative or meaningful to a photograph. Instead it overwhelmingly exists only to inflate the price of work for the benefit of an art market which is more interested in commodification and financial returns than with the meaning of the work being bought and sold. The supposed auric quality of a limited-edition photograph has everything to do with it’s market value, not it’s creative value.

Editioning emerged in the early modern period as a completely logical quality control method. It allowed print makers using methods like wood block printing to monitor their output, and ensure that the number of prints produced did not exceed the number that a printing block could produce before it began to wear to the point of degrading the image. Canny printers also noted that early edition numbers were usually higher quality reproductions, sometimes leading to higher prices for those prints. Subsequently it has attained the status of a ritual in the art world, which artists and gallerists continue to practice despite many being completely oblivious to it’s original purpose.

Reflecting this history, the only works of mine which I edition is that which is produced using a method which is inherently limited, for example screen printing, where the stencil is subject to wear and tear, and is reclaimed and destroyed at the end of the print run. My conventional photographic prints are un-editioned, reflecting the fact that they are inherently reproducible. Handmade prints, for example cyanotypes, are also un-editioned, reflecting the fact that each print is itself already unique.