The Magic Ink & Disposable Culture

[William Mortensen]

"Most things in this world change, discolor, fade. Look in the mirror: you're not archival, and neither am I. Nor are the people we sell the work to. It's really a silly obsession, unless your work is actually made for archival purposes." - paulr

Agreed, and this somewhat points to an odd predicament within the human condition. For want of immortality, we want to leave something of ourselves behind. Be it an artistic legacy, a statement, a moment of simple passing pleasure for someone else, we want to be remembered. A medium that promises to be a vessel to carry a man's passion, then sinks before making it out of the harbor, holds itself out for an especially passionate condemnation.

The true lifespan of the inkjet print may be longer or shorter than expected, but it's all a matter of degrees...

Paul, if you're posting from NY, you're up way too late. Go to bed...

[paulr]

You're right, off to bed.

but not before one last thought ...

John said, "I have a cardboard box full of prints from the teens, twenties and thirties that were stored under horrible conditions and the prints still look great ..." And Donald said, " a lot of paintings as old as five centuries still look great when the accumulation of centuries of lamp soot and industrial air pollution is removed ..."

but I'd like to mention again that their looking great doesn't mean that they're unchanged. There's more to the ageing of paint pigments than getting dirty ... many of them fade and yellow or change color. Absolute failures by any standard of archival permanence, but still they can look great, and they can have the same kind of power over us as they did when they were shiny and new. Same with silver prints. Often they yellow, stain, discolor, or fade, sometimes a little, sometimes more. But they can still look great, and they can still move us.

I bring this up because our standards for old materials are often based on how things look, and our standards for new materials are often based on sensitometry, graphs, and lab reports. These reports tell us when something has changed, but not if we'll still like it.

With inks, a lot of it is a new frontier. That's where the excitement is, and it's also where the risk is. Some paper/ink combinations will prove to be disasters, as many already have. Others will set new standards of permanence. If not the ones we have now, then the ones coming in a few years. But many will turn out like the materials that came before them: they will change. They will fade, yellow, and discolor. And they may still look great.

[Duane Polcou]

"Ahhh, so we're just not built to LAST..."
Rutger Hauer to Harrison Ford in Blade Runner.

[adrian tyler]

what are you worried about? havn't you been listening to the warning shots that our planet is giving us? i would suggest that our over fed, complacent self indulgent society has less time left than an ultrachrome...

get a paintbrush.

[Joe Lipka]

My big question is whether or not anyone will WANT to see my photographs one hundred years from now. To me, the first question concerns whether or not the subject matter of my photographs is worthy of being archivally preserved.

[John_4185]

Joe My big question is whether or not anyone will WANT to see my photographs one hundred years from now.

Quite possibly, Joe, especially if your work captures evidence of the current culture, or endangered places, or places that change regularly.

Molly and I went to a local estate auction of an MD who lived here for his ninety years. In a small town, these auctions are as much a social event, rather like a wake, as an auction. Molly knows just everyone it seems, having lived here for over fifty years and she noted immediately that there were a lot of strangers in fashionable clothes attending. Molly can engage anyone in conversation and she found that the strangers included, for example, Manhattan and California antique dealers. The Doctor had a box of old photographs. I went through them and to my uninformed (stupid) mind, the only remarkable one was an (approx) 8x10 super-wide angle picture taken indoors at a labor party meeting. All the rest were just half-assed landscapes of no remarkable quality whatsoever.

Each landscape print went for a minimum of $400, some astoundingly higher.

Turns out they were turn-of-the-century photographs of places such as Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Bernadino, California hills, and similar places now covered in humanity, threaded with cement. There apparently is a niche market for the wealthy who's view includes what those photographs evince.

[Joseph O'Neil]

I'm chairman for th elocal heritage advisory committe for my city, so I get to "hang out" with th eodd archivist, historian, etc, etc. A few random thoughts..

- generally speaking - and yes, there are exceptipons - but on the whole, from the time of the Civil war up to modern times, black & white prints seem to be the best archival media around. Many/most books post Civil war are acid filled paper,a nd degrading in front of our eyes. Many colour films have fadig dyes,a nd anything comptuer media related as an archival mdeium is a complete joke.

- YES, your old prints are important. even if they suck big time artistically, when you research history, it is much like investigating a crime scence - the smallest detail can sometimes lead to very big things. I personally se LF photography as very important in our times, because I simply do not trust anythign digital anymore for historical accuracy. Again, there are certianly excpetions with large format - hey, you scan in a negative, anything can happen, but overall, if peopel wan to create an image form the get go, they usually start with a digital image to begin with. At the very least, if you negative survies the passage of time, it will be archival in itself;

- I am currently workign on research for a one fo a kind, 150 + year old document. Looked around for some pro lab that could do a scan for me. First thing I hear is "it's an odd size, we may have trouble". Gee - no kidding, people 150 and 200 years ago weren't wise enought to make all their documents fit into today's modern scanners. grrr. For waht it is worth, when process cameras were still in full use, you *never*, ever heard anyone complain "oh, that old document is an odd size, were' going to have problems.' I did get the document scanned - took them only 2 hours to figure it out - and this is the local lab reccomended to me by all the local museums/archives as th ebest place in the city to get it done. What the heck are the others like? Digital,eh? grrr.

- digital isn't totally evil however. I often take my little 3 megapixel camera, and often shoot a scence first with it to get an idea of what my shot may look like. So as a tool, or for vacation photos on the fly, and other uses, it is great. But from an archival standpoint, it's more bad news than good. Dunno the answer.

joe

[John_4185]

Joseph O'Neil ...

Joseph, I did a skeleton (prototype, unfinished) for a County Historical Society - web pages that use Sanborn Maps of the 1800's and later. We planned to place markers on the page-maps where there are photographs. It was part of a proposed rephotographic effort in which I bid to do it all in LF and MF, but they chose a person who's going to shoot it with digital.

I'll check permissions and post the skeleton/prototype if you are interested. I also have hundreds of scanned photographs, some going back 145 years. The scans suck. I hope the society eventually elects to do them again right.

Can you tell I'm discouraged? Man, I'm too old to suffer shortsighted historical efforts. We may as well be writing in the sand.

[William Mortensen]

"Many/most books post Civil war are acid filled paper,a nd degrading in front of our eyes." --Joseph O'Neil

Given the title of this thread, "The Magic Ink & Disposable Culture," I wonder whether one of the more archival records will be a well-made contemporary photography book. Much better papers, often acid-free and sometimes cotton-based (rag), and the photo-mechanical inks tend to be much more stable than toners and dyes used in inkjets or analog color processes. Images in books tend to be protected from UV damage except when being viewed.

Certainly it is an ambitious and expensive way to preserve one's work, but beyond reaching a wider audience and coelescing one's work, there might be some satisfaction that the copies of the book will be around long after the photographer departs.

[Ed K.]

Some Additional thoughts -
My father painted watercolors most of his life. He did what he could to use good paper and mix pigments from scratch to last. He didn't take good care of his work - no salt mine, no sealed archival boxes, just a stack in the attic. Today, many people have those paintings, and nearly all of them survived just fine. Seventy years and going strong. What do the collectors like the most? Scenes that depict people and places around Los Angeles, or scenes that capture a mood of a time now long past. He shot tens of thousands of photographs too, however most of them were tests of some equipment, or the usual family stuff. As his equipment moved toward the modern SLR, the magic of his photographs seemed to be replaced by more and more test shots. He took some wonderful photos with a Kodak 1A or a Bessa. And for the family stuff, at least I can see the mood of it; how my dad felt about his son, and oddly enough, see how little I have changed inside as I remember that moment. The times when he tried to do a good job on the photo or watercolor, taking some care in doing it proved to be worth looking at today.

So, dad taught me to develop B&W, and print it too. Early on. Yours may have done the same for you, too. Started with medium format, as so many did. Then came 35, more medium, large, and well digital. Lots of digital. Some great, but frankly, low quality images. Then color. And here, years later, full circle, B&W, film, but large format. LF just works fine, and needs no "virtual" excuses, sharpening, or noise reduction.

Part of the question is whether we modern photographers, blessed with so much research, fine optics, indeed the finest films ever made in some cases, and nearly any equipment we wish to have can release those bonds and use the tools for a worthy purpose, a purpose beyond just excercise of equipment. This is one reason that I shoot less digital now, and more LF. LF has a certain simplicity to it, and a way of recording the moment. I dream of using the tool for more, and so silly me, I strive to do just that. I wish I could hear some thoughts from others, to help inspire, to know that there are indeed others looking to put the message in a bottle, or make a statement.

In terms of tech, last night, I thought of a couple of solutions to permanence. 1 - create a new uranium photographic process, that way, while nobody would be safe to look at my prints for 500,000+ years, at least they would be properly stored somewhere as hazardous waste, so they would last just fine. In the end, somebody could view my lead images! 2. create a storage container disguised as a piece of modern equipment, but nicely sealed, then put photos in it, and finally, toss it in the dumpster. Once burried, it might be safe for a thousand years...

Who might want to look at an image? Paintings not lasting long enough? At the Norton Simon recently, I stood locked in a trace, exploring a simple painting of the merchant square and ship docks in venice. Having read many stories about the time period shown, I was amazed to see all the attire of people in the square, the rigging of the ships, and all the social interaction. The painter had made a time machine. The image was rich and beautiful by itself, yet its humble rendition took me somewhere I could never go to. With all we've got today, can't we do the same?

And there is nothing wrong with doing anything for the pure joy of it, or the technical art of it either. On this forum there are so many masterful, and wise people who have so many gifts. As just another speck on the planet, I wonder if those gifts will find an outlet and and audience some day.

Hey Donald - I could save a lot of money by taking up painting...