Digital BW, The Print

Wilhelm's testing and excellent reputation has done a
> > tremendous amount to move the industry to more stable materials
and have
> > our inkjet photos accepted as a serious medium.

That's wonderful, but it doesn't mean Wilhelm's statements about
"archival" are, or ever have been, anywhere near accurate. 

In particular, if we're still using INKS as opposed to PIGMENTS we're
rejecting what we learned from him (carbon inks may logically be more
permanent than non-carbon, but Wilhelm's not even hinted anything
about them (right?wrong?), so citing him and then rejecting his
guidance seems odd. 


> Absolutely!  My mother-in-law has professional portraits of each of her 
> children (5 daughters) along the main hallway in her house, both baby, 
> toddler, and wedding  pictures.  The prints are between 10 and 45 years 
> old, and they don't receive any direct sunlight.  Most are fine, but a 
> couple show extreme fading, including some of the most recent.  Clearly 
> the prints are made with different materials, with some being much more 
> long lasting than others.  

You're probably talking about color prints because very few
photographers delivered B&W in the mid/late 20th century.

Most of the decay in color prints, assuming Kodak or Fuji or other
good Japanese paper, has to do with processing variables rather than
paper variables. Many labs did weird processing with Ektacolor paper,
just as they did/do with C41. Those were the dominant materials in
that 10-45 year period you cite. Minilab prints (1hr labs) are
particularly suspect because they have almost always used abbreviated
chemistries. If you think their prints have faded, you should try
printing their C41 negatives after a decade or three.

I've got hundreds of color photos on various materials, made in the
same period by good professional labs (which means labs that almost
exclusively serve professionals), that show little or no fading.

I've got hundreds more, made from the 1880s until WWII, B&W, that are
easily scanned for reprinting to look like modern images...made in
backwoods California photolabs, in Harbin China, in Indonesia, in
Russia, in Austria etc. There have always been bad labs (some of your
mother's) and there have always been good labs. 

Wilhelm doesn't address lab skills...some of us are applying weird
substances to our prints and then claiming Wilhelm has some relevance.

I think that if we really do respect Wilhelm we shouldn't drag his
name so carelessly into marketing. He didn't bless our work, nothing
he said has relevance to our allegations about the "archival" nature
of our prints. Relying on his tests is a way of lying to clients, and
it's false advertising if we put it in print.