Piezography Printing

[sanking]

Tim and I are specifically talking about contemporary work. With vintage work, all kinds of connoisseurship regarding printing process and date come into play. But I don't think any of us is old enough to be selling work on the vintage market (a good thing, right?)

I did talk about contemporary work in my previous message. Clyde Butcher is a specific contemporary example I mentioned where you can compare selling prices by process, in this case inkjet prints and silver prints. Moreover, I believe that if you ask you will find that most contemporary photographers who print in both silver and pt./pd ask and get more for their pt./pd work than silver.

Obviously the reputation and ability of the photographer to market his/her work is more important in terms of determining value than process, and some people only buy photographs as illustrations so process is totally irrelevant. However, there are many collectors who are indeed interested in process and willing to pay for it.

In any event this is something of a moot point as far as I am concerned. I don't make carbon transfer prints for their material value. I make them because the end result has a unique quality that can not be duplicated with any other printing process, because I am addicted to processing of making hand crafted print, and from a desire to keep alive one of the oldest and most beautiful and stable of all photographic processes.

Sandy King

[paulr]

Clyde Butcher is a specific contemporary example I mentioned where you can compare selling prices by process, in this case inkjet prints and silver prints

Sure, I sell my inkjets for less than my silver prints too. But I think Clyde and I are both bad examples, for a number of reasons. In my case, my silver prints are in tiny editions so I feel compelled to charge a lot for them. Ink allows me to make editions any size, so I make them more than twice as large. Edition size always has a direct link to market value.

In Clyde's case, it's a stretch to call his work contemporary. It's lovely, and he happens to make it today, but it's all retro style imagery that sells in markets that are quite different from the contemporary art market. I could be wrong, but I don't think you'll see any Weston-esq images of his selling at Sotheby's no matter how famous he gets in his own circles. The people buying his work are not the collectors who buy Struth and Gursky and Chris Jordan. Different markets have very diffferent rules.

[Kirk Gittings]

Contemproray in a time sense vs. contemporary as an art aesthetic. I agree with you Paul. While I love allot of Clyde Butcher's work, I look at it as traditional landscape photography.

[sanking]

I could be wrong, but I don't think you'll see any Weston-esq images of his selling at Sotheby's no matter how famous he gets in his own circles.

I would not bet on that. "With the passage of time both the aesthetic and documentary qualities of photographs are changed, and we come to accept the image as 'art' if for no reason other than that it is a relic of time. The particular qualities and intentions of photographs tend to be swallowed ujp in the generalized pathos of time past. . . Time eventually positions most photographs, even the most amateurish, at the level of art." Susan Sontag on Photography, Anchor Books, 1990. p. 21.

Sandy King

[paulr]

Alright, Sandy, but after that much time passes, Clyde's work won't be contemporary by any measure at all.

At any rate, I'm not passing judgement on weather Clyde's work is art or not; just pointing out that he's participating in a completely different market than what Tim and I are refering to. He's selling vintage-ish work on an online storefront, with prints in multiple sizes and prices from the same image, either in large editions or completely open ones, at art fair and decorator prices. This is simply a different market that plays by different rules. It only confuses the issue to compare his market to the one of the international galleries and auction houses.

[sanking]

Alright, Sandy, but after that much time passes, Clyde's work won't be contemporary by any measure at all.

At any rate, I'm not passing judgement on weather Clyde's work is art or not; just pointing out that he's participating in a completely different market than what Tim and I are refering to. He's selling vintage-ish work on an online storefront, with prints in multiple sizes and prices from the same image, either in large editions or completely open ones, at art fair and decorator prices. This is simply a different market that plays by different rules. It only confuses the issue to compare his market to the one of the international galleries and auction houses.

OK, but I have completely lost track of the point you are trying to make. To be clear, the only point I am trying to make is that there are many marketplaces (we agree on that at least), and that in some of the markeplaces process definitely makes a difference in value (it does with Butcher, and by your own words, it does with you as well). I am not saying that process always makes a differnce in value, or even that it usually makes a difference in value, but that there are marketplaces where it can and does make a difference.


Sandy

[Carioca]

There is historical use of the following terms to describe specific pigment printing processes:

carbon
carbon transfer
direct carbon
pigment printing
carbon pigment printing
carbro
three-color carbon
three-color pigment printing
three-color carbro

Then there are the propietary systems, such as Ultrstable (color pigment printing), Fresson, Artigue, etc.)

Sandy King

I've just discovered this thread today, but find it very interesting...

Maybe we should call them e-carbon prints (the same way we created the word e-mail)? Electronic transfer of carbon pigment to paper?!?

Just a thought,

Sidney

[tim atherton]

I've just discovered this thread today, but find it very interesting...

Maybe we should call them e-carbon prints (the same way we created the word e-mail)? Electronic transfer of carbon pigment to paper?!?

Just a thought,

Sidney

I like it (and if you use a mac it could be an iCarbon Print...)

[Greg Lockrey]

Why not just use piezo-print ?

[tim atherton]

Why not just use piezo-print ?

I know that's the context of this thread - and many do. But plenty more use non Piezography (tm) carban and/or pigment inks