Imagine wine being presented as white or red only. Telling someone that you're serving a merlot as opposed to a claret is not pretension (unless you're lying). There was a relatively short time in the history of printmaking when a photographic print was only one of two or three things - each of which looked distinctly different from the other. Times have changed, and the variety is nothing less than vitality for the art, but the variety requires labeling. When I look at a print I'd like to know how it's made because it helps me appreciate it. Because like many of you I don't just look at photographic prints for the content, but also for the craft. There is nothing at all pretentious about being accurate and descriptive.
The out of use term the industry should be using to describe its inks is "Lightfast". Archival is a more complicated term that has to do with storage and presentation. But the industry, like the consumer public, generally has a contempt for language.
I used to think B&W ink prints looked awful too until I went to see Steve Rosenthal's (no slouch) show last month. They were nothing short of spectacular. If they were silver-gelatin prints I probably would have been completely blown away, and still talking about them... but for Steve they really were about the buildings depicted and the light and the form and not the prints as a demonstration of manual skill and command of the chemical process (he's been there, done that, and has moved on). You should have seen him moving his hands over a detail in the print and talking with great interest about how he was able to show the light coming through a window better than he'd ever gotten in the darkroom. This was not an artist lacking passion or skill, and he knew how best to present his work. He was very specific also about how faithful the scanning was to his negatives. You wouldn't and couldn't tell him the prints looked awful.
Now I wouldn't spend money on ink jet print that I worried was going to fade in three months, nor would I buy a silver-gelatin print from someone I didn't trust to properly fix and wash his/her print. Unless the price is right, and I wanted the image badly enough - there's a $10 RC print on my wall that I just had to have.
When is it not good to know? Elias On Feb 19, 2010, at 4:50 PM, Carlileb@xxxxxxx wrote:
I get a big kick out of this "pigment print" baloney. It's pretentious, and an attempt to sell inkjets as credible alternatives-- so the "archival" thing they add shouldn't be a big surprise.The 'silver gelatin" description is also a hoot- it's equally pretentious. Remember the days when they used to just call them "prints?"By the way, I think B/W "pigmented prints" look just awful, especially when made from that faux black and white digital substitute for the real thing. Like turning off the color on a TV.I'm amazed more people don't agree with this. Color prints are OK-- sometimes very good-- but B/W?-- no way.In a message dated 2/19/2010 1:27:30 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, tsll@xxxxxxxxxxxx writes:Shannon: ....call them what you want.... terry On Feb 19, 2010, at 2:36 PM, Shannon Stoney wrote: > I went to a photo show today in Houston, and about half the prints > were "archival pigment prints." This was at a prestigious gallery > in Houston, and the prints were up for auction. There were some > gelatin silver prints too, and some chromogenic prints, and a few > alt process prints. > > it's nice that there's such a variety of different kinds of prints > now. The "archival pigment prints" were mostly very sharp and > good. But, why do only *they* get to call themselves "archival"? > Aren't silver prints "archival" too? This term--archival pigment > print--makes ink jet prints sound somehow better than "regular" > prints. I wonder if they really are.
