Anybody else getting heartburn with the new 'Carbon Print' ?

[Crispin Agnew]

actually, I thought it was rather sad to see Clyde Butcher apparently publically bullied by what is probably a rather vocal minority.

[Chris Partti]

Katharine, sorry for the misspelling.

[sanking]

Kevin, As I mentioned before, when direct carbon processes were introduced people used proprietary names to label the processes to differentiate them from carbon transfer printing. Thus we had a form of carbon printing that was by such names as Artigue, Fresson, Zimmerman, etc. I think a name that clearly indicates the proprietary nature of the pigmented inks would be appropriate for labeling pigment prints made with inkjet printers, for two reasons: 1) not all pigmented inks are alike and it is likely that some systems will prove much more permanent than others, and 2) a proprietary name would establish that we are dealing with a machine print, and not one made by hand.

I certainly don’t agree with you that the general public is sophisticated enough to understand the difference between these processes, though I don't imagine there will be much of an issue at the gallery level. I may be wrong about this but my belief is that in the long run most artists care too much about their reputation to risk creating the impression that they are misrepresenting it as something it is not. And I think we have already seen an example of this in the actions taken by Clyde Butcher.

I really don't have much more to add to this discussion. I respect your opinion, and you make some good points, but if you really believe, as you stated in a previous post "It is the image that counts; everything else is absolutely secondary," it is highly unlikely that we could ever agree on this particular issue.

[D. Kevin Gibson]

Sure Sandy, agree to differ to a slight degree.

"I really don't have much more to add to this discussion. I respect your opinion, and you make some good points, but if you really believe, as you stated in a previous post "It is the image that counts; everything else is absolutely secondary," it is highly unlikely that we could ever agree on this particular issue."

I think a very good example of this is my colleague and very successful photographer Paul Graham. He currently has a show up at MOMA's PS1 (very big prints diasec face mounted on plexi and printed, incidentally, via Lightjet, though if Epson would have given him one of their beta ulstrawide printers, he would have used that and ultrachrome pigment inks by preference). I remember some of his first shows in London and Newcastle twenty or more years ago. The work was still often quite big, but it was just ordinary C-Prints done at his local 1hr hight street type lab. But it didn't matter - it was the content that counted, and that has been proven over time as far as his work is concerned.

[David A. Goldfarb]

Here we are again at the question: Is the medium part of the content?

I believe that it is. The medium sets physical limitations and creates expressive possibilities, and artists who choose their medium carefully usually do so because the possibilities of that specific medium speaks to them in some way.

[Kaatharine Thayer]

Look. I was making digital prints when some of you were probably in grade school. This isn't about Neanderthals refusing to admit that the world is changing, it's simply about calling things by their right names.

The digital prints that I made were very interesting, at least I thought so at the time, (they looked like watercolor paintings) but the only people who were interested in them were other photographers, who thought they were incredibly cool and wanted to know how to make them. I made a modest living for a time running around demonstrating digital methods in little workshops sponsored by photo supply stores, at a time when Photoshop was used exclusively by prepress workers, not by photographers. So it makes no sense to say that I have something against digital prints as a process. I only object to the practice of trying to pretend that digital prints are something other than what they are.

The argument that "inkjet" can't be used because people will think it means a primitive business machine seems odd to me when everyone and his brother in law has a photo quality inkjet printer on his desk, but at any rate, I haven't argued that the word "inkjet" has to be used; I've advocated for "giclee" which is already a well-accepted word in the standard lexicon of artists and galleries to designate inkjet prints. You could even say "carbon pigment giclee" to distinguish it from iris or from other inkjet inksets; unlike Sandy, I have no objection to the word "carbon" as long as it's attached to a word that buyers will understand to mean a digital print.

All the obfuscations about enlargers and UV printers being machines in the same way that inkjet printers are machines are simply disingenuous and unproductive. Everyone understands the distinction between a handmade print and a machine-made print; that's why Clyde Butcher's handmade silver prints sell for $250 and his inkjets sell for $45; that's why many painters offer giclee reproductions of their paintings at a fraction of the price of the original painting. Digital workers may be able to convince each other that carbon is carbon and it doesn't matter how it got onto the paper, but that argument simply won't fly out in the real world where people buy art and where there is a real distinction between handmade art and machine-printed art.

[Crispin Agnew]

"I believe that it is. The medium sets physical limitations and creates expressive possibilities, and artists who choose their medium carefully usually do so because the possibilities of that specific medium speaks to them in some way."

Equally there are those, probably greater in number, who take up a more esoteric or less common process in order to compensate for a lack of creativity or vision thereby hoping that the unusual nature of the process will carry them further in the eye of the viewer than if they worked in a more common or mainstream medium where the content itself is more plainly and openly exposed to view.

In such cases the process itself more often becomes the focus of the work rather than the content - which is of course entirely valid - the crafting of beautiful objects. For example, much of platinum work one sees more often appears to have been done for the sake of the process itself rather than the resulting image.

Those who manage to combine the two are very rare indeed (for example, Michael Smith).

[D. Kevin Gibson]

"Everyone understands the distinction between a handmade print and a machine-made print; that's why Clyde Butcher's handmade silver prints sell for $250 and his inkjets sell for $45; that's why many painters offer giclee reproductions of their paintings at a fraction of the price of the original painting. Digital workers may be able to convince each other that carbon is carbon and it doesn't matter how it got onto the paper, but that argument simply won't fly out in the real world where people buy art and where there is a real distinction between handmade art and machine-printed art."

A rather large and inorrect assumption. Not everyone cares about the sublte hand-made/machine-made distinction in photography, especially many artists and buyers and institutions.

"that's why Clyde Butcher's handmade silver prints sell for $250 and his inkjets sell for $45;"

And yet fails to explain why machine made digital prints by Andreas Gursky (among others) sell for $650,000 +

[clay harmon]

"And yet fails to explain why machine made digital prints by Andreas Gursky (among others) sell for $650,000 +"

I think this may be very much the exception. Can you name another photographer who can sell digital prints for this sort of price time and time again? I think the earlier comment about Clyde Butcher's pricing structure is certainly more the rule than the exception you noted.

" "A rather large and inorrect assumption. Not everyone cares about the sublte hand-made/machine-made distinction in photography, especially many artists and buyers and institutions. "

We must be going to a very different set of auctions and galleries. I think it might be more accurate to say that 'Those making digital prints don't care about the sublte hand-made/machine-made distinction in photography'. I think it is still far from decided as to what collectors prefer.

Over time, preferences and attitudes will surely change. But right now, I think only a nouveau collector at a local craft fair may be the only photographic print consumer who doesn't at least give consideration to process as a factor in deciding what something is worth or not worth.

[sanking]

Katharine Thayer wrote:

"You could even say "carbon pigment giclee" to distinguish it from iris or from other inkjet inksets; unlike Sandy, I have no objection to the word "carbon" as long as it's attached to a word that buyers will understand to mean a digital print. "

I should amend my earlier statement because I overstated the case. I have no objection to the use of the word carbon to describe an inkjet print made with pigmented inks so long as the buyer understands it to be a digital print made that comes from a machine, not a hand-made one that has been wet processed. Digital carbon seems perfetly ok to me.