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

[John D Gerndt]

One more lick to the dead horse: Give the process a trade name and let people viewing the art/output, figure out if the process is improtant to THEM. A significantly NEW process needs a NEW name.

[Jan Pietrzak]

I am going to start with this summer, and APIS and the presentation made by the Getty. After APIS Terry King and I were guests of the Getty to see some of the research that they are doing. One of the tools that they have can scan and readout all the componant parts of any art work. Carbon prints by Getty defination are prints made using a dichromate/bichromate process. This is the standard for the process used for cataloging work.

Any artist/photographer can call their work what they want but in the end reachers and catalogers will set you right. Do ink jet output print need a name yes, but they need a new name.

[Julian_3496]

i agree whole heartedly Jan. We need to find a description that identifies as clearly as possible what goes down on the paper. Unfortunately 'carbon pigment' is the main component of high quality inkjet prints and differentiates it from low quality output. I alo agree that people calling quad prints 'carbon pigment prints' is confusing to say the least. This is why you see so many variations - but I will still describe my prints on statements as 'carbon pigment quadtone inks on heavyweight archival paper'

[sanking]

I would like to add a bit of information to this discussion because I think it is an important one. Proper identification as to process is in fact a very important issue for artists who sell their work through galleries and anyone who claims that it is not is pretty naive.

Let me begin this discussion by noting that I am a carbon printer. I am also a photo historian and have done quite a bit of research on carbon processes, of which there are really two important types. I have also been involved for over a year in testing the carbon tissue that B&S plans to market beginning in early 2004 and am preparing at this moment a review article on these materials for a national magazine.

The carbon process as I practice it was introduced more or less in its present form in 1864 by the Englishman Joseph W. Swan and the term thus has a history of use of almost 150 years. Swan used a paper support, coated on one side with a pigmented-gelatin solution, known as carbon tissue. After sensitization with dichromate and exposure to UV light this tissue was transferred to a temporary support for development. When dry the resulting pigment image was transferred to its final paper support. Swan began marketing carbon materials in 1866. The carbon process introduced by Swann has been historically called either carbon or carbon transfer. Other names have been used from time to time but this can be confusing. For example, the gallery that markets Joseph Sudek’s carbon and/or carbro prints refers to them as “pigment prints.” In the 1880s and 1890s a process that we call today direct carbon was introduced. In direct carbon the image is developed directly without transfer. However, the people who produced materials for this process did not call it direct carbon. Rather, they used proprietary names such as Artigue, Fresson, etc. Quadrichromie Fresson as practiced by the Fresson family in France today is a form of direct carbon.

Although there are some significant differences in image appearance between carbon transfer prints and direct carbons they share some important qualities: both comprise pigments suspended in gelatin, which has been hardened by exposure to UV light.

What we know for a fact about carbon, based on surviving carbon prints from the 19th century, is that it is the most permanent of all photographic processes. In fact, the permanence of the image itself is limited only by the support on which it is placed.

I have absolutely nothing against pigmented prints made with inkjet printers. In fact, I own an Epson printer that makes pigment prints and there is no doubt in my mind but these prints are much more permanent than prints made with inks. However, they are different both in physical composition and in appearance from real carbon prints, and I very much doubt that they are as permanent. For those reasons I would expect that serious artists and gallery owners would chose a name for this type of print that does not confuse it with traditional carbon. I really don’t know what that name should be but I don’t think it should contain the word carbon.

Quite frankly I must admit that my feelings are somewhat conflicted by this controversy because it has had the beneficial result of bringing some attention to a process which very few photographers, even advanced ones, knew anything about.

And let me add that it was very gratifying to note that Clyde Butcher made a change in his website to eliminate any possibility of misrepresentation. We should expect and demand the same from all serious artists and gallery owners.

[Kaatharine Thayer]

Ok Katharine, I'll use your argument: an enlarger is a 'machine'. You must start calling your work 'silver gelatin enlarger prints'. Your implication that people that use the digital process are trying to 'fool' buyers is plain ignorant and insulting.

This response shows that my post wasn't even read, as it uses the argument that my post responded to and continues to to ignore the distinction between a handcoated process and a machine-printed process, which is the important distinction that is being elided in this discussion. Furthermore, it assumes that I use an enlarger and make traditional black and white prints, which I don't and which he would know had he read my post.

I don't think people making prints are fooling buyers, as long as they are honest about what they are offering buyers. If there is something in the label that identifies it to buyers as a digital print, then it is not misleading; if there's not, then it is.

[sanking]

Just for the record, and to avoid offending any of my gum bichromate friends with the comment that carbon is the most permanent of all photographic processes, I need to add that I consider gum bichromate to be a form of direct carbon printing. And I gather that Nadeau does as well because his book on gum dichromate is called Gum Dichromate and othe Direct Carbon Processes, From Artigue to Zimmerman.

[D. Kevin Gibson]

unfortunately Sandy Quadtone inkjet printing (as well as other forms) turned to both pigment inks and carbon in part for the very reasons you outline with regard to tradtitional carbon printing - their longevity and stability

That is one of the major points (possibly the major point, along with the obvious ability of carbon pigments to produce greyscale prints) of using these inks. As such I think the two terms do have to be used in describing the prints. In actual practice I think they will increasingly be used to describe this form of printing. It is very very hard (despite your clear arguents and reservations) to argue that a process that uses carbon pigments (or other pigments) as an essential part of that process should not use those terms in describing or labelling the process itself and the resulting prints. I really don't think it will happen, nor do I think it is going to happen.

I think the general public, never mind institutions and galleries, are certainly sophisticted enough to understand the difference - there are plenty of other similarly worded yet different processes in all sorts of different areas that people have no trouble with. I think that can be the case here too.

The short answer is that, as much as they would perhaps like it, tradtional carbon printers don't have a monopoly on the terms "carbon" and "pigment"

[sanking]

The short answer is that, as much as they would perhaps like it, tradtional carbon printers don't have a monopoly on the terms "carbon" and "pigment"

Kevin,

I have no problem at all with the use of the term pigment as part of a description of pigmented prints made with inkjet printers. It is the use of carbon to which I oject.

BTW, in an earlier message you wrote:

"The point being that many "Carbon" prints - monochrome ones - don't actually incorporate any carbon/carbo black pigment at all - but rather pigments of different sorts. "

This is not correct, Virtually all formulas for monochrome carbon tissue consisted of a fairly high percentage of carbon black as the basic pigment. There were a few special colors that did not contain any carbon black at all but this was the exception, not the rule.

[D. Kevin Gibson]

Sandy, early on there was talk of "calling a spade a spade" - if the process uses carbon pigments (as opposed to the colour inks use of colour pigments) why not call it carbon pigment? Or do you prefer to call a spade an earth moving implement?

"This is not correct, Virtually all formulas for monochrome carbon tissue consisted of a fairly high percentage of carbon black as the basic pigment. There were a few special colors that did not contain any carbon black at all but this was the exception, not the rule."

There are those who prefer to use Mars Black

[Chris Partti]

Sandy King's description of the traditional carbon printing as a "a process which very few photographers, even advanced ones, knew anything about" pretty much debunks the notion that by calling their work "carbon pigment prints" inkjet printers are somehow attempting to trade on confusion with the older carbon print process. As Sandy's post implies, the buying public simply has no knowledge of what a traditional carbon print is, and association with carbon printing is unlikely to add any "value" to inkjet prints. Furthermore, anyone sufficiently knowledgeable about alternative printing processes to understand the value of a carbon print is just not going to be confused. Is there any evidence that any purchaser of an inkjet print labelled "carbon pigment" has ever thought he or she was buying a traditional carbon print?

Notwithstanding the extreme unlikelihood of confusion, as Clayton Jones's post points out, inkjet printers have gone through quite a lot of soul-searching and debate to arrive at some common terminology that describes their process positively and accurately while avoiding confusion with the traditional carbon process. To my mind, "carbon pigment print" is a reasonable compromise: that label is (despite Jorge's reference to a Nineteenth Century French source which, in his quotation of it at any rate, does not appear to contradict the point) distinct from the terminology of "carbon print" or "carbon process" usually used to refer to the traditional method. I, personally, feel no dishonesty in using it (although I might have preferred "Carbon ink"). I think Sandy is the only one who has explicitly stated that inkjet printers should not use the word "carbon," but many of the other comments imply this. It seems to me that it goes too far to say that users of a material should not say what that material is only because it is also associated with another, older process.

Finally, on Katherine Thayer's point about the distinction between hand and machine-made processes: While she may have no need to identify the machines used in her own printing (I'm assuming, of course, that she exposes by sunlight and does not use a UV light producing "machine"), that does not answer the point that it has not been traditional for photographers to identify the machines they use (enlargers, UV light banks, timers, etc.) in labeling their prints, and it seems a double standard to demand that inkjet printers do so. Of course, the term "inkjet" is (erroneously, I believe) associated in the public mind with cheap, non-stable, "snapshot" prints and long-obsolescent document printing technology. Digital printers understandably want to avoid that erroneous association. It seems that some non-digital printers are just as eager to saddle digital printing with those negative associations, for reasons I don't quite understand.