Digital BW, The Print

I feel the same way these days about Alpha Cellulose. The Innova Soft 
Texture and the Innova Cold Press are as far as I can tell right now, the finest 
inkjet papers I've ever run across. They are just killer with both quad inksets 
and Ultrachrome. And, right, all the Ilford Gallerie, Agfa Portriga, and Kodak 
Kodabromide we used in years past were all high grade wood pulp, none of 
them cotton rag. 

I just saw a fantastic show in New York this week called First Seen, at the 
Dahesh gallery. It was a giant show of 19th century photography from the very 
beginnings of the medium, when Hill and Adamson,  O Sullivan, Curtis, WH 
Jackson, Hilyers, Talbot, Francis Frith, Muybridge, etc, etc, made their 
journeys . It is an amazing show of some of the oldest albumen and kallotype 
photographs in existence  of places that were never photographed before 
these people made their glass plate and paper negatives there.

These photographs were done from the the 1840's - aprox 1870 and I can't 
remember any of them being stained or faded that weren't glued in albums.  I 
certainly can't imagine their celluslose paper had the testing and quality 
inspection that the best papers of today have. These prints looked spectacular 
after all this time ( and they didn't even spray em). 

John