How do you describe ink jet process

[John Brady]

I know this thread can go downhill quickly and I hope it doesn't but here goes anyway.

I have been doing juried art shows this year and I am showing 32x40 inch framed black and white prints I make on an epson printer from 8x10 film. Some of my patrons love the fact that I still shoot film but then we get into the inevitable discussion about printing. First off they think they are silver prints but I explain to them they are giclee, a term I hate using by the way. Calling them ink jet doesn't sound very flattering either. I try to explain to them that I had been a silver printer since I was a boy and had even worked at a lab back when they still had such things. I try to explain to them that for the work I am doing today that I couldn't achieve the same results any other way and feel it is the best method to produce the look that these prints have.

I am trying to come up with an honest yet better way to describe this process. If any of you have any suggestions I would love to here them.

An observation I have made is that the people who are buying my work are not concerned about the process but are instead buying the image. The people who want to have lengthy discussions about the process once had a dark room and in most cases have no interest in buying my work anyway.

I would love to develop some brief statement that brought people back to admiring the work and not get hung up on the process.

I am not embarrassed about my methodology and I am not trying to appear better or worse then anyone doing wet prints. I would just like people to focus on the quality of the image, that is if they feel it has any.

Any advice would be appreciated.
www.timeandlight.com

[Bill L.]

FWIW, I tell them that I print on an Epson professional photo printer using archival inks (or that I'm using a 9800 or 4800 inkjet printers if the person is interested). If people ask me about giclees, I discourage the term as too generic, it can be used by some to mean high quality archival prints or by others for someone's $50 home inkjet. Our take is that if the artist is reasonable, they should be willing to talk about their processes at least sufficiently so that the buyer knows what to expect for permanence of the print. I agree with your observation that those who are interested in buying the photo have not really cared about the process in general. I shoot primarily color, though.

The one downside of going through my process lately has been "oh - can you print MY photos like that?" Sigh.

Cheers!
Bill

[Joel Truckenbrod]

Giclee is really just a marketing tactic in my opinion - while it works for some, I'm also not a fan of the term. I prefer to describe it in terms of the material process - think of "Gelatin Silver" as an example. So, in my case the materials typically would be described as "Pigment on Cotton Rag Paper".

[BarryS]

These days you'll rarely see a museum or reputable gallery use the term giclee. I use the terms "pigment print", or "pigment ink print", and I've been seeing more museums use similar terms.

[Walter Calahan]

Gee Clay – clear as mud to me.

I hate the French term for spaying ink on paper.

But then I'm sure the French hate it when they are forced to use an English word to describe something.

Ha ha ha ha ha

[Eric Brody]

I like the terms "pigment print" or "archival pigment print." Both terms are accurate, I hope the archival part is true with K3 inks on the new baryta papers. I too dislike "giclee" because it sounds pretentious. I don't use the term "inkjet" because I believe that prints made on the higher end Epsons (and probably Canons and HP's though I know nothing about them) ARE superior to dye inkjet prints made on many home printers. I like Joel's choice of "pigment on cotton rag," because it is descriptive. Any description that is honest and not pretentious is ok with me.

Eric

[Kirk Gittings]

"Archival Pigment Ink Print" or simply "Pigment Ink Print".

[roteague]

Ink Jet prints

[David A. Goldfarb]

"Pigment print" is a historical process, also called "pigment transfer print," and should not be confused with "pigment inkjet print." Calling an inkjet print of any sort simply a "pigment print" is a distortion and to my mind, fraudulent.

[Toyon]

I agree, if I saw "Pigment print" I would suspect the artist is hiding something. Inkjet seems quite accurate and doesn't denigrate the medium. Giclee is simply French slang for "ejaculate", so one can make generative inferences. I value inkjets less than silver gelatin, as many people do, simply because a wet print is the actual artifact of light-induced chemical reactions, so it is actually a photograph, while an inkjet is a reproduction of a light-induced reaction happening on a separate device. So the inkjet is one-step removed. Others don't care, the final product is what matter to them. But to me, process is integral.