Digital BW, The Print

As a framer and a photographer just a point of view.
I have had the pleasure of working on three Ansel Adams prints in the
last year and all were dry mounted onto matboard, and all looked great. 

I mean it's one thing to look down your nose at dry mount, but if it's
good enough for Ansel it's good enough for me. I dry mount a lot of my
own work and have prints that are 30 yr old dry mounts that look great. 

I have also reframed some 50 yr old dry mount onto some kind of board
that looked good, and some that looked awful, but that looked like bad
fixing or rinsing and resulting image loss.
>
> Antonis and those that are interested, I believe that the Fusion
4000 is still available, but to 
> be honest I haven't dry mounted my own prints in years (but will
probably be doing so for 
> larger prints in the near future), so I'm not exactly sure exactly
sure what the current 
> products are in the industry.  

I have found fusion 4000 to be a difficult product to work with. It
has some static to it, is a little clammy and hard to lay out. 

Most dry mounting these days in frameshops use a special dry 
> mount board (usually a foamcore) that would definitely NOT be
considered archival.  
> Framers, at least the good ones, would never consider dry mounting
an original work of art 
> unless specifically asked to do so, and many will have you sign a
form stating that dry 
> mounting could possibly devalue the work.  Dry mounting us usually
reserved for items like 
> posters and commercial work where permanence is not an issue, but
cheap and flat is!

There are a lot of other ways to do it which I base on customer needs
as well.
Some people value flat more than someone elses idea of what archival
is. A dry mount can be done to 4 ply cotton rag or 8 ply cotton rag. 
There is also a product by Drytac? called drychival which is supposed
to be even more neutral to the art. 

I never put anything in the press that cannot be replaced reasonably,
but I do tell my customers that something (even L/E prints sometimes )
won't magically become flat and dry mounting fixes that. 

If you, or viewers of your artwork, see the ripples from hinging that
will inevitably show at different times of year, you are doing a
disservice to your art IMHO.

Hope I don't sound too crotchety. I like the look of dry mounting
(flat) and think far too many people are hung up on "archival". Which
is just a point on the compass with no reference.

Good mounting to you,
Jerry
> 
> Randy
>