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

[clay harmon]

I ran across this link on another site, and I posted my rant. But am I just being a curmudgeon for thinking that calling an inkjet print a 'carbon print' is just a little disingenuous? There is a 100+ years of a traditionally accepted meaning of the phrase 'carbon print', and to have this term co-opted in the interest of avoiding 'calling a spade a spade' just seems shameful.

http://clydebutcher.com/emarket2//home.cfm?emailid=64

Any thoughts?

[ Please note that Clyde Butcher has amended his website to remove the term "carbon print",
apparently in response to comments made by participants to this thread, therefore acknowledging
the concern. QTL ]

[Jim Galli]

Yes! My first thoughts exactly. If Cone or someone else trademarked the name Platinum for their ink-jet inks would that make it a Platinum print? It confuses the issue.

[David A. Goldfarb]

You can file that one along with "Selenium" inks and "Digital Platinum Prints."

I've read that Clyde Butcher used to print murals on RC paper and replaced them with fiber prints at his own expense when they started to deteriorate. He is a great photographer, but maybe inclined to look for shortcuts at the printing stage it would seem.

If Ultrachrome is such a great medium, and for certain things I believe it is, why not call it by its name?

[Chad Jarvis]

Yes, I find it irritating as Hell, especially since I am one of those masochists who actually spends time mixing gelatin and sumi ink only to have my tissue not release from the base after exposure!

[clay harmon]

As I posted in that other rant, I suspect that if the prints were actually MORE difficult to produce than a real carbon print, there would be no question but that a new name would have been created to differentiate the process and add cachet to the resulting print. But as I see it, this just co-opts the association with real skill and craft involved in the traditional method. It seems as if people are trying to piggy back on the hard work of all those who have gooey colored gelatin oozing all over their workrooms.

[John Kasaian]

Sounds sort of like Yoghurt. Whatever the heck they put in those plastic cups you get at the market sure ain't Yoghurt, but they call it Yoghurt anyway.

[Don Bryant]

Clay,

I posted a rant about this well over a year ago on the B&S web forum and Dick copied it to the Carbon mail list; look for the subject line "Will the Real Carbon Print Please Stand Up?". If you are interested, research the archives to read the real carbon printers take on this.

Trying to challenge the knuckle heads that call digital B&W prints, "hand pulled carbon prints" is a waste of time IMO. Using their logic one could call a photogravure a carbon print and so on.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but visual comparisons of the same image printed as a real carbon print and an inkjet print will dispell the confusion. Unfortunately many people consider inkjet prints a form of alternative processes, including Christopher James.

[Huib]

Clay,

Yes, carbonprint is ill choosen for what is a plain inkjet print.

I'm not shocked by the fact that yet another name is introduced for inkjet (more will follow for shure), it is who does. I expected that an established photographer like Mr. Butscher would not need to do this.

Huib

[Bill_1856]

Sour Grapes. If the image is printed by laying down carbon particles on the substrate surface (whether by drawing with India Ink or a computer programed inkjet printer), then it's a carbon print.

[David A. Goldfarb]

So is an airbrush painting an "inkjet"? If a work that has carbon in the form of India ink placed on a substrate with a pen is a "carbon print" then why not call Clyde's inkjet prints "pen and ink drawings"?