A guest post written by David Aimone, owner of AimonePhoto
“A photography site that provides the finest handcrafted prints and the knowledge to improve your own photography”
Recently, WJ Eastman of GALLERY5X7 wrote about the building of a community of alternative process photography print collectors in a guest blog on AimonePhoto, “The Search for the Private Photography Collector: Building a Community of Collectors.” As the owner of AimonePhoto, I’ve been offered the opportunity to describe my own community in a blog post here! I’m writing this post representing the site and its artist photographers.
Essentially, GALLERY5X7 and AimonePhoto have a lot in common. Both sites promote handcrafted prints and present them for sale. Like GALLERY5X7, AimonePhoto offers much more! Along with print sales, we present guest photographers, educational and informational blog
posts, community sharing and resources.
AimonePhoto is also a community of and for artists, offering multiple levels of involvement. Site Artists contribute most of AimonePhoto’s content, have prints for sale and participate in the promotion and direction of the site. Site Contributors are those artists who have applied or have been invited to share their work, their thoughts and ideas to the community through portfolios, blog posts and comments. Subscribers are the audience of photographers, art enthusiasts and other interested parties that are learning, collecting and sharing. It is truly a communal effort!
There are areas of the website that are quite frequently visited and used at this time, including the print shop, portfolio collection and blog posts, spanning product and photographer reviews to educational and “how to” posts. Other areas of the site are in more of a “developmental” stage, including subscriber image sharing, user forums and much more. It is a group, cooperative effort. All “resident” artists, as well as guest artists, provide content.
Currently, there are five resident artists, each bringing a unique craft and viewpoint to their photographs and blog posts.
In addition to providing content and promotion, these artist have prints for sale in all price ranges and made with a variety of processes, from silver gelatin and archival pigment to platinum and gum bichromate. A list of the processes utilized can be found here.
Guest Portfolios are welcomed and we publish these regularly:
Both film and digital photography are represented at AimonePhoto, from iPhone to 8×10” film, and a variety of processes are offered as prints. What makes these prints so special? They are handcrafted by the artists using archival and or historically-sound methods. Some prints are multi-layered and/or unique one-of-a-kind. Many utilized the finest papers, noble metals, pigments and photographic print processes “rediscovered” since the reign and dominance of digital, push-a-button prints. Even archival pigment prints are made using archival inks and papers by mills such as Arches and Hahnemuhle. These prints are works of art in the truest sense.
You can see how these prints are made here, and there are blog posts that go into more detail as well. For every successful print, artists have experimented and learned their processes through many failures, and some delightful surprises! When noted, we do utilize modern methods for special print runs and styles, but the focus here is on Artist-Handcrafted-Prints.
AimonePhoto lists events and calls on its events calendar and blog posts.
You can learn more about AimonePhoto from our Newsletter Archive. While you’re there, subscribe to our Weekly Newsletter of new prints, blog posts, portfolios and events.
Please leave your comments and questions below – I would be pleased to hear from you and welcome your thoughts.
David Aimone
Owner, AimonePhoto
