Gregory Colbert

[clay harmon]

Sanders,

I too was amazed at the level of professional marketing savvy that was used when this work hit the street. The website alone makes it clear that this was not pulled together during a one-night espresso-fueled creative binge. It is very clearly a long term, very well organized and orchestrated effort. That said, I am with you in that I find the deliberate obfuscation that continues to swirl around the proper name for inkjet prints to be both sad and funny. They are what they are. Why try to hide it?

[tim atherton]

"Ink Prints" plain and simple is by far the best term

[clay harmon]

How about decepto-types?

[Kirk Gittings]

Ink prints......I agree with you Tim and it is more consistent than "ink jet" with the names of other proceses. Most proceses are named by the materials used like "gelatin silver" or p/p rather than the mechanical process. Otherwise enlarged silver prints would become something like "optically projected gelatin silver"

[tim atherton]

John Szarkowski suggested it to me and it really does seem a good, simple, concise term.

[clay harmon]

The only problem I see with 'ink print' is that photogravures are also ink on paper. Entirely different mechanism for getting the ink in the paper, not to mention the difference in appearance. Most names for mediums implicitly suggest both the materials and the process. It still has a little odor of deception and deliberate imprecision, like calling a food "low fat" or "low calorie". I just don't know why there is this aversion to the term ink jet. That is how they are made. What is the problem? The prints should speak for themselves, IMHO.

[Sanders McNew]

It's an interesting but worn debate.

I agree wtih Clay that it's either troubling or amusing that this medium already has a commonly-accepted name -- inkjet print -- but people keep trying to find a euphemism for it that removes the association with computers.

Outside the hothouse debate among photographers, the general public has a hard time accepting the notion that "art" comes out of a computer. Or that there is value in a print that can be exactly reproduced thousands of times with the push of a button. That is why the marketing machine that is Gregory Colbert (let's not forget the original subject here) looks for a euphemism for "inkjet print" -- does anyone here know what an "encaustic process" is? -- and emphasizes the "handmade Japanese paper" in his ad copy.

Sanders McNew

[tim atherton]

"The only problem I see with 'ink print' is that photogravures are also ink on paper"

and they are called... photogravures, not ink prints

"Most names for mediums implicitly suggest both the materials and the process"

"Gelatin Silver hmm - not really (unless you are a chemist)? Platinum Print? not much different from the term ink print in terms of it's descriptor. Salt Print? Orotone? There are no real rules. The users and developers of the processes came up with their terms through time and usage. How usefully descriptive of the materials and processes is Van Dyke Print or Ambrotype?

You can also go for "pigment ink prints" as another option - most photographers in both cases adding in the type of substrate used - "on cotton rag paper" or whatever

[clay harmon]

Encaustic painting is a process where the pigment is mixed with beeswax and applied to the chosen substrate. It actually is one of the oldest known painting methods.

I suspect that the prints just have a layer of renaissance wax applied to them after printing to give them a mild sheen and increase the dmax a little bit. Platinum printers have been doing this for over a hundred years.

[tim atherton]

"I agree wtih Clay that it's either troubling or amusing that this medium already has a commonly-accepted name -- inkjet print -- but people keep trying to find a euphemism for it that removes the association with computers.

Outside the hothouse debate among photographers, the general public has a hard time accepting the notion that "art" comes out of a computer."

Incorrect on both counts really. If there is move for disassociation, it is probably to remove the processes from the conception of the prints resulting from $99.99 home desktop printers of 8 or 9 years ago. Colour went through a similar problem - people either associated colour photographs with the cheap processes of the local high street lab and their holiday snaps or gaudy over the top advertising work. Yet now a majority of good photographic art today is probably being made in colour. That the work may be partly or wholly computer generated isn't a problem

Again, I don't think the "public" (if that is your concern) has any issue that art can come out of a computer. The art world certainly doesn't have that problem. And it isn't generally "the public" that define s art (thank goodness - or we end up with Trisha Romance or Kinkaid as the high watermark of contemporary art...!)