Digital BW, The Print

I've been a large format "zone system" printer for  30 years myself and when I hear people 
complain about pigment inkjet prints not being of substantial richness compared to 
gelatin silver it usually means they don't  know how to control or set up a good digital 
workflow. This was also said about color digital a few years ago, that it wasn't "real" 
photography and never would be. Almost always the problem was with scans that were 
done with amateur scanning equipment or by individuals that hadn't mastered the 
technology. 

Actually when A. Adams visited us at the University Of Arizona in the late 70's he told us 
students that we would all be doing digital printing soon and that it would out class 
anything he was able to do using those cancer causing chemicals. Not only that but he was 
so convinced that digital was going to be superior that he put in the contract with the 
Center For Creative Photography archive where he left his negatives and master prints, 
that we students would be be encouraged to take his negatives and "translate" them into 
prints using the digital technology that was soon to come after his death.  He was right 
but he would have been very surprised that it took us this long to get monochrome right. 
And, it will get better yet. That generation, if they had lived long enough, would be leading 
the charge away from the poisons and the 19th centrury tonal analogue limitiations. 
Digital and pigment isn't the same as g.silver, its better. Like photograhy isn't art, its 
better. Baudelaire wrote whole essays on how photography was "fake" art and should be 
shunned by the whole art establishment. Now people want to do the same with digital. 
History repeats itself. They did the same with electronic music in the 80's. We're bored.