Stanley Smith wrote:
They couldn't sell any books if they had faithfully reproduced the original prints-- it would have looked like a mistake. In Strand's defense, I believe he was used to throwing a lot of light on a print when evaluating-- not a lighting condition that is often reproduced by a casual viewer.
If that was actually the case, then technically it is correct for the book to not colorimetrically match the originals - an appearance adjustment has been made to allow for different viewing conditions. What's interesting is whether that appearance adjustment was made empirically, or in accordance with an appearance model. It's also interesting that if preservation considerations mean that a very much lower light level is being used to display the original works than was used by the artist when creating them, then in fact an appearance adjusted reproduction may be truer to the original intention that the works themselves as exhibited. [This brings to mind an experience I had recently viewing an exhibition of (mainly) clothing, where the light levels were set very low. <http://www.vogue.com.au/fashion/news/grace+kelly+style+icon+at+bendigo+art+gallery+,17229> Rather that using lower wattage lights, the curators had simply dimmed down their usual incandescent lamps to extreme levels. The resulting "white" point was very, very red, and that combined with the very low light levels meant that adaptation to the white point was extremely slow and incomplete. The result was exceptionally poor color rendering. In fact they knew they had a problem because there were signs basically saying "don't complain about it - we have to do it". I don't know whether to be surprised or not that the curators of a regional museum would appear to be so ignorant of lighting technology and its interaction with human vision.] Graeme Gill.