Individuality, Repeatability and Computers

[Dick Hilker]

oh - what's a giclee?

A giclee print is an inkjet reproduction of an original painting, usually watercolor, but sometimes other media. The term itself is just what the French call the inkjet process, but has a cache that gets a few more bucks per print. <g>

It's become a nice little business for me with the other members of our art guild who would rather sell prints of their work than the originals. With the right equipment and paper, the reproductions are almost indistinguishable from the originals.

[tim atherton]

A giclee print is an inkjet reproduction of an original painting, usually watercolor, but sometimes other media. The term itself is just what the French call the inkjet process, but has a cache that gets a few more bucks per print. <g>

It's become a nice little business for me with the other members of our art guild who would rather sell prints of their work than the originals. With the right equipment and paper, the reproductions are almost indistinguishable from the originals.

Sorry Dick - it wasn't clear that was a rhetorical question...

Though it's not actually French for inkjet, it's Franglais. In French usage, as I recall, it's actually a veterinary term for ejaculate or spurt....

[tim atherton]

A couple of additional thoughts

A major impetus driving the invention of photography was for a cheap mechanical means for reproducing images (of several different sorts). This relatively quick, cheap means of mechanical reproduction is at the heart of photography as a medium.

Following on from this, most of the early attempts turn photography into art (and they did start very early on) centred around trying to diminish the mechanical reproduction aspect of photography and replace it some amount of mental and physical "work" (very closely tied to the definitions the Academies had developed over the years to differentiate the artist from the artisan/tradesman).

Among other approaches, there was the movement towards the excessive combination of multiple images in the darkroom (culminating in Rejlanders excessive Two Ways of Life in 1857, combining 30 separate images in the darkroom). It was also responsible for the popularity of the gum bichromate process which allowed for a great amount of "hand work" and manipulation - the greater the better to confirm the medium's status as an art.

In the end, most of these attempts failed as a way of defining photography as "art"

[Dick Hilker]

"as I recall, it's actually a veterinary term for ejaculate or spurt....

I recall that, now that you mention it, Tim -- thanks! The French always manage to make the mundane seem kinda sexy, don't they?