Transience
Thoughts about printmaking and life.
September 15, 2011

In 1995 the first dye-based photographic printers produced prints that could change visibly in a year or less, depending on display conditions. Some dyes would fade more quickly than others, dramatically altering the color balance of the images as the prints aged. The transient nature of these prints was a huge disappointment to lots of people, and it gave photographic ink jet printing a big black eye. There were improvements in these dyes over the next few years but the big change came five years later in April of 2000 when pigment based inks were introduced. They made it possible to create color prints with that could last well over a century without visible changes. In what was essentially a single step, inkjet printing had become the most permanent color process in the history of photography. With print permanence problems solved, manufacturers turned to issues like gloss differential and bronzing on semi-glossy and glossy media, and metamerism, all of which were side effects of the long lasting pigments. In the nearly twelve years that have followed print lifetimes have extended to nearly four centuries on certain papers displayed under UV inhibiting glass, and numerous other improvements have been made. Today we have large format professional printers that are capable of making the best and most permanent prints in history on materials that range from matt and glossy papers to canvas, sheets of aluminum, and wood veneers. Things will get better in the future, but inkjet printing has definitely matured and I wouldn't expect any earth-shaking improvements in this process of color printing.

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With long lasting inks in use, the substrate (I’ll confine myself to paper) now has proportionately more influence on print life than it did in the past. Perhaps because of that there are more accelerated aging tests being done on more papers by more labs and companies than ever before. The resulting data helps raise awareness that not all papers are created equal, and it can help everyone make more informed decisions when choosing papers. That’s fantastic, but quite a few seem to have become obsessed with archival characteristics and let them overshadow more important aspects of paper selection. First and foremost, paper choice plays a huge part in the appearance of an image, and therefore in the photographer’s personal interpretation of that image. Paper surfaces can be perfectly smooth, in finishes that range from matt to glossy, or they can have any amount of texture in finishes that range from matt to semi-glossy. Paper choice can alter the amount of fine detail visible in a print. It can mute highlights and make an image look softer and more painterly, or it can reproduce every fine detail in the image accurately with a high contrast traditional photographic look. There are obviously many possibilities. In the fine art world a photograph's appearance is its only reason to exist. It is what fulfills the photographer's personal vision and brings it to others. Very little compromise is acceptable in this regard, so you can't just go to a table of accelerated aging tests and use it to choose a paper. You have to actually print on some and pick the ones that work for you.

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Certainly, if two papers are equal in terms of appearance but one has a longer expected lifetime, that’s the paper to use. Unfortunately that’s not how it works. Most papers have no visual equivalent unless it’s the same paper under a different brand name. “Similar” is as good as it gets when looking for an alternate paper, especially among the various baryta-based papers. Whether it’s similar enough is a judgment call, but I’ve never been able to find a paper “similar enough” to replace any that I use. It's obvious that good print permanence is always a requirement, but beyond some point, that each of us must define, permanence needs to take a back seat to one’s vision for the image at hand. Most prints really don't need to look new 400 years after they are made. The key is learning about the properties of the materials you use in order to make informed, reasonable, and balanced choices.
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Papers that provide the longest print life without appreciable appearance changes have matt finishes and a very warm tone. They have a smaller color gamut than the whiter and shinier papers, the black tones aren’t as dark, and according to someone I know these papers look old before you print on them. In spite of that these papers work extremely well, depending on the photographer's intent, for certain images. On the other hand, no single paper can be right for every image. When faced with an image that needs deep blacks, bright whites, and the look of a silver gelatin photograph, printing on a warm matt paper only serves to produce a compromised print that will last several centuries before it starts looking even worse. It’s much more sensible to make a print that really sings for a mere lifetime or so before the effects of aging begin to appear.

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It’s important to realize that without an identical reference that has not aged, which no one ever has, only significant changes in appearance are detectable to the human eye. For example, aging changes that become detectable after 50 years in a side by side comparison with an un-aged reference may not become evident for 70 years without that reference. I'm making up numbers here, but you get the idea. Even the term “lifetime” is extremely subjective in this context. Any good acid and lignin free paper will last for centuries with proper care, and modern pigment images on these papers will remain perfectly visible and identifiable. “Lifetime” is a matter of how much change occurs, how much of it you are able to see, and how much is acceptable.

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I would go on about optical brightening agents (OBAs) and lots of other factors if not for the fact that image permanence has nothing to do with life expectancy for most prints. Photographers don’t like to hear it, but most prints are not displayed long enough for aging to become an issue. The best data I can find was compiled by Kodak from an informal survey of professional photofinishing labs. It indicates that 46% of all photographic prints are displayed for less than 5 years, 58% for less than 10 years, 79% for less than 20 years, 98% for less than 40 years, and virtually no prints are displayed for 60 or more years. People have finite wall space, they replace old artwork with new, accidents happen, and people die. Prints are often retired to attics or basements where environmental conditions ruin them regardless of what paper is used. Physical damage occurs and the print ends up in the trash. Prints are thrown away, given away, or offered for a few dollars at garage sales when the owners die and the survivors have different tastes, or when the owner simply gets tired of the piece. Unless you attain incredible fame and your work sells for a small fortune your prints will probably be incinerated or buried in a landfill before discernable aging takes place. Again, this is not to say that anyone should use lousy short-lived materials, but it emphasizes that compromising your vision in an attempt to make that compromised vision immortal is ridiculous.

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Prints, people, mountains, planets, solar systems, galaxies, and the universe itself have beginnings and endings. Change fills the time between. Everything is transient, and our lifetimes last for only a moment. The greatest thing you can do in your moment of printmaking is create prints that truly fulfill and convey your personal vision. They will last longer than you will.

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Happy printmaking,
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As a somewhat unrelated side note, I’ve digitally restored a number of prints that are more than a century old. All or most have at one time or another been stored in less than ideal conditions, all were quite yellowed, some faded almost to the point of vanishing, and many had mechanical damage or deterioration of the paper to the point of crumbling. Some of these exhibited "silvering", metallic silver on the surface of the print, caused by improper washing of the print after developing and fixing the print. In other words, they were not properly processed to begin with. In spite of all this they survived. While a number of these restorations could have been made to look like new, without exception their owners wanted them to “look old”. Most high quality prints made today will not “look old” in 100 years, if they survive that long. Make of that what you will, but perhaps age has some charm of its own.

 

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