Building a Fine Art Photography Collection with Marilyn Ticknor

Arizona Photography Alliance is more than just a “camera club” in that it brings together people with varied interests in photography. Photographer members span the gamut from those who make a living in the field to those that earned an MFA with their practice to those just working their way through the technical fundamentals in order to develop their craft. Marilyn Ticknor is a long time member of the local group Imageworks, devoted to large (4×5″ or larger) format photography. She also collects photographs.

About as long as she has been a photographer, Marilyn has been a collector of photographs. The occasion in January of inviting AZPA into her home was to address the topic of collecting photographs. December’s meeting, the print share, proved that collecting photographs was an interest of a large number of AZPA members. In January, they had a chance to get tutored in the ground rules and to view and discuss the collection accumulated over a lengthy period by someone intimately involved with photography.

Marilyn lectured on the things that make a photograph worth collecting. Photographs are now commonly editioned so as to limit the number of reproductions of a particular image despite the medium itself imposing no limits on the quantity of identical images. Process is also a consideration. Some techniques like platinum printing will limit the quantity of images produced simply because each print requires a considerable investment of time. With techniques such as tintypes, there is no reproduction possible. Each image is unique. Marilyn discussed these things and more and accompanied the explanation with examples from her extensive collection.

The lecture/demo on collecting concluded with a tour of the house where we all were able to see the mounted and framed prints that decorated the walls. One thing we all took away from the day was that a major consideration of selecting prints for your collection was whether they spoke to you, whether they were something you wanted to live with and enjoy for a long time. Marilyn Ticknor hangs very few of her own photographs but we all enjoyed seeing some examples of her work. Arizona Photography Alliance is grateful for the chance to gain some insight into collecting photographs from our member Marilyn Ticknor.

See Marilyn Ticknor’s Photography on her website