Richard Avedon Paid His Printer With Prints… And That Is A Problem

The prints were Mr. Hofmann’s reward for his labor, he said, explaining that he struck a deal with Avedon in the fall of 1984: instead of money, he would be paid with a signed print of everything he produced for the project. “Dick had no conception of what people lived on, and asking him for money was difficult,” he explained. “Being paid in prints seemed the path of least resistance.” But there is a snag. None of Mr. Hofmann’s prints from the series is signed.