"I'm here to help"
reedprints.studio launches, in the darkroom with Sergio Purtell
From the studio:
I can’t bury the lede - reedprints.studio, the home for a small business I’ve been working on building in 2022, is now live.
When you browse the site, you’ll see a living vision for the Reed Prints brand, something that, over the past year, has slowly taken shape in my mind, and eventually with my hands.
In early 2021, I published an unlisted page on my personal website where you could order photographic prints made by me, because I saw a confusing and intimidating market when it came to printing options for photographers. Since then, many of my close friends have put their trust in me to make prints for them, but the tiny business also began to spread beyond my immediate circles through word of mouth. This low-key way to slowly ramp up a small business idea ended up having more teeth than I expected, and I realized I wanted to make Reed Prints something significant, something… real. Providing a down-to-earth print studio for independent photographers will always be my main focus, but I’ve gotten really excited about crafting a brand along the way too. Not to be dramatic, but this is the moment when Reed Prints really begins.
Here’s how Reed Prints has changed now that it’s all grown up:
I’m now offering Silver Prints alongside Fine and Work pigment prints. These are handmade wet darkroom prints. This service is in beta testing, but I’m very excited about it.
The Marketplace - a digital gallery space where you can browse and buy printed works from a growing group of independent photographers - is now live. Eventually there will be more things to buy on the Marketplace, like zines, small-run books, and print sales, but for now there are some very talented photographers (all of them good friends) who are trusting me to sell their beautiful work. If you’re a photographer who has works you’d like to sell as prints, you can apply to list them on the Marketplace.
Reed Prints now facilitates Print Sales. If you’re a photographer and want to run a time-sensitive print sale to raise money for a specific goal, you can apply to do that as well. Reed Prints is doing all the heavy lifting of managing e-commerce and fulfilling all print sale orders, allowing photographers to make almost completely passive income.
I’ve started up a partnership with a Cincinnati-based custom frame craftsman, Mark Albain, making frames under the name Objectif Alchemy. Mark’s handmade frames are truly stunning. You can now order frames for any print on the Marketplace, and soon you’ll be able to order frames for your own prints and for your clients too.
I’ll be publishing Prints are Powerful™, this Substack, every month-ish. I’ll be interviewing people who are involved in the world of photographic printmaking and also be sharing updates from Reed Prints (and announcing sales) here.
From an artist - Sergio Purtell:
In March of this year, which now seems like a lifetime ago, I had the chance to attend the 2022 Chico Portfolio Review hosted by Charcoal Book Club, which is basically an excuse for a huge group of photographers to travel to a hot springs resort in Montana for a week to have their art critiqued by photo professionals, and then soak their sorrows away in hot springs every night.
While all the photographers who attended Chico were getting their projects reviewed during the event, I had the chance to escape to a nearby darkroom with Sergio Purtell (and fellow photographer Marshall To, who’s in the pictures below), founder of print studio Black & White On White in Brooklyn, and a first generation Chilean immigrant who has been photographing and printmaking for almost 50 years.
Although BWonW is considered perhaps the premiere photographic printmaking studio in the US (Sergio prints for Aperture, Robert Adams, Mark Steinmetz, the Walker Evans estate… yeah), it sort of has an under-the-radar, IYKYK vibe.
The studio’s website is bare bones and its Instagram is fairly inactive, which might feel odd given that strong digital marketing seems necessary to run a business anymore. Sergio told me that in this point in his career, however, essentially all of his business comes from referrals and his iron-clad reputation in the industry. At his price point, probably only the most serious photographers are able to invest in prints from him - something their exhibitions and books will surely be all the better for.
As we worked in the darkroom for days straight receiving a silver printing master class from Sergio, the safety lights transformed us into ruby ghouls and the fixer fumes snaked their tendrils into our lungs. Our time together somehow felt fleetingly brief - the darkroom has always had a way of warping time - but just being around Sergio for the week, I started to get a better sense of the person he is.
Though he’s an accomplished photographer (his first book, a body of work he made when he was my age was published by Stanely/Barker in 2020 and is now out of print), he’s not interested in notoriety. Sergio put it simply: “I’m not selling myself - I’m here to help.”
Sergio put it simply: “I’m not selling myself - I’m here to help”
It was clear he meant it too. He spent the week helping us review the most basic dodging and burning techniques, and answered all my questions about what it looks like to run a successful printing business. His selfless attitude is also evident in his choice to work as a printmaker too: the work is often thankless. The printmaker is often the first to be blamed if something goes wrong with an exhibition, yet often disappears into the background when the work is a triumph.
What most stood out to me though was Sergio’s humility. Often it seems an artist’s trajectory leads down a path determined by solely by what he or she is creating. Sergio has found a different path. He was there to give back - generous with his time and in his sharing of wisdom.
For me, this was ideal inspiration as I head into making Reed Prints a core facet of my work as an artist and business owner. I like to think Sergio and I see very much eye to eye on the role of a printmaker — I started this business to provide a service and advocate for all of the talented photographers I know, and to see someone who’s done the same, but on a much larger scale and for decades, gave me something to look forward to.
- Reed
From me:
I recently came across these stunningly framed prints by Danish artist Anton Funck on display in Copenhagen’s V1 Gallery; deckled edge watercolors on 600 gsm paper, generously floated in natural cherry frames with hand-detailing carved into them — the stuff of dreams:
C4 Journal wrote up Tealia Ellis Ritter’s Model Family book; families in one form or another are so often the subject of documentary photography, but never have I seen a family captured so powerfully, over three decades no less:
This summer I made dozens of exhibition prints for a Georgetown show of Kate Fleming & Tom Woodruff’s 50 States Project, a project in documenting each state in America over the past three years. It’s no longer on view, but Kate, who previously worked for the Hirshhorn Museum in DC, designed an fantastic exhibition of the work:
