Digital BW, The Print

I agree that it's a serious problem, made worse by various reports, 
some widely accepted and some constantly argued, about fading and 
color shifts; even on this list and in the past couple of days, we've 
had discussions about whether Piezo prints are brown or neutral or 
oyster. We've had things like Epson's 200-year color turning out to 
be more like four to six weeks if you have any ozone around, or maybe 
it's fly-spray or something else in the air. To have people say that 
this can be cured by a committment to reprint doesn't solve the 
problem: a lot of collectors buy only "vintage" prints, because that 
reflects the state of the artist's mind at the time he or she made 
the original photograph; anything printed years later is not only 
essentially different, but (and this is important to many collectors) 
worth less. There's also the problem that a collector might wonder 
whether he can even *find* the photographer two years later, when 
he's looking at a badly faded photograph; why should he have to pay 
good money to go through all of that? I think it's essential that the 
Piezo folks and the people at MIS hire a serious independent or 
university lab to do some serious, extensive *scientific* testing 
using *serious* equipment and rigorous, repeatable procedures, to 
tell us what we have, even if it's done only with a limited range of 
papers and for very specific formulations of ink. At least we would 
have a baseline. People have noted that some Piezo looks brown and 
other people have complained about "getting the greens" and we don't 
know if this is actually happening, or if somebody had a four 
martinis last night and is looking at the prints through bloodshot 
eyes, or, for that matter, if the Piezo people have quietly 
reformulated the ink or the ink factory may have had some quality 
control problems. For amateurs (and I'm using this in the best sense 
of the word, recognizing that some amateurs do exquisite work) it may 
not matter, and some may make print after print of one neg, over may 
years, and enjoy the evolution of the work. Professionals don't have 
the same luxury; if you're trying to make a living selling fine-art 
prints, you oughta, as the man says, be able to look the buyer in the 
eye as you're taking the check, knowing that you've given them a real 
piece of craftsmanship that will last a while. You can do that if you 
make a good silver print or platinum print, and follow established 
procedures. In reasonable conditions, the print will last a century 
or more.

JC