Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Mark Tucker" <mark@m...> 
wrote:
snip
> to do is find the VERY best solution that exists today, and to try to 
> have some hard evidence to back up my decision. And then to 
> pick that and get to work.

Mark, Wilhelm put a priliminary hard number on his site of 75 yrs for 
Generations and Royal Plush. That's way better than traditional color 
photographs, and not too bad really. At least it's a number, and for 
specific ink and paper.
> 
...I'm just shocked that more people aren't concerned with 
> this issue. It's one of the main reasons that inkjet prints can get 
> NO respect in the gallery world. I personally think there's a good 
> bit of "The Emperor's Clothes" going on with inkjet; everybody's 
> just printing away, thinking everything's fine and good, but 
> nobody knows FOR SURE about the behavior of their materials, 
> and the town's citizens snicker a bit when they walk by the 
> window of the inkjet print shop. Conversation overheard on the 
> sidewalk: "Are you in line to buy a print?" "No, I'm 
> in the line to have mine remade..."

People like Steve Meyers, Bob Obenland, others, and myself have have 
been fairly pushy with Cone about providing some kind of statement 
that doesn't smell bad. After enough pushing he tends to reply with 
long posts containing his thoughts on the issue of archivalness in the 
art world, and info on why the inks are formulated as they are. His 
thoughts are welcomed and very illuminating. No one else in the 
industry tends to sit down and write to us all like he does on 
occassion, certainly no one with his extraordinary background.
Unfortunately he never really tells us what we want to hear, a one or 
two sentence statement that is somewhat reassuring that we can relay 
with only one or two small shifts of the eyes.
John Paul Caponigro stated in an article that Piezo prints would last 
125 years. Rather outrageous, where did the info come from? What 
paper? On and on...I think these unsupported statements make the 
problem worse by adding to the confusion and making us look better in 
cheap suits. But Cone replied that he saw no reason they wouldn't last 
that long, or at least 100 years. I've decided, for no particular good 
reason, to move forward under these curcumstances. I think people like 
Cone, Norm Levy, and others are relatively small business people 
obsessed with craft as we are. Their lives depend on these products 
and the info they put out there.
The bottom line is that I can finally get the tonality and control 
that always escaped me in the darkroom, as well as the lovely 
surfaces. I really do think the language of these prints presents my 
images better, I'm not sure I can walk away from that.
Less than ideal for sure, and I do feel more Mickey Roarke when I'd 
rather feel Gary Cooper, but everyone knows you can't trust an 
artist...
Tyler