Discussion of Printing Issue

The "Stuff" Page

Archival:
Regarding Print durability: To the best of our knowledge, as of August, 2009, there is no clearly defined commonly
used standard that specifies what this word means. The de facto standard for print permanence has been
whatever Wilhelm is doing. What ASTM, AINSI, ISO, etc have to say is not to be found without buying the
standards. Regardless, comments in whatever I am able to find in the lay literature are that the standards simply
are not there for digital media. To what extent they are available for traditional black and white printing (gelatin
silver) , the standards are not readily available on any of the online searches I have tried.

When you see the word "ARCHIVAL", the person using it must tell you what they mean.   Reality is that most
things are susceptible to the ravages of time, particularly pollution including very sturdy materials such as stone
which is why you see something in the news periodically on the deterioration of statues in Europe.

Archival has three components: 1. The durability of the materials, 2. The quality of the product made with
durable materials, and 3. The environment in which the product is kept.

1. We use Durable materials which includes canvas, 100% cotton rag papers, and pigmented inks (see
Wilmelm's testing of Z3100 inks.   )

2. We make everything carefully and coat our canvas prints with several layers of protective coatings.
Prints on fine art paper must be framed behind glazing by the buyer.

3.   We have no control over how someone displays the print. And this may be the most critical issue
assuming that a print was not made with inks known to be susceptible to fading (fugitive dyes or
pigments).

We use products from Epson, HP, Breathing Color, and other reputable makers of fine art paper. This link goes
to what Breathing Color has to say about permanence
http://www.breathingcolor.com/bc/catalog/includes/sts_templates/our_standard.html

There is a British standard for fine art printing which is blue wool 6. Breathing Color has certificates for three of
their products: Canvas , Optica One, and Elegance Velvet.

We will be doing our own blue wool testing in the next year or so. Instead of a Xenon lamp we will use good old
New Mexico sun. This will not be to ASTM standards but will approximate them. Truth is that anyone who claims
that their work is Archival should at least show that it meets informal blue wool testing. Simply following a
procedure as one traditional black and white photographer argued (I process my prints to an Archival standard)
does not of course mean that the end result is archival. As is always the case, you must measure.   So it is
important to distinguish between the quality of the materials and the final product. Simply using
"archival" quality materials does not mean that the final result is truly archival. For example, do you
handle everything with gloves? If you store prints for any length of time, under what conditions were
they stored? If you are using coatings, are they always of the same thickness?

Without gloves, we don't touch the face of anything before it is printed and coated.

Rather than throwing around words such as archival or giclee, what I want to know about anyone's
work is: How careful are they? What do they know about protecting work? How do they protect their
work? What materials are they using?

The National Park Service has many items of national importance. Their comment s regarding the potential
dangers to materials are sobering.