Richard’s Notes

Interesting discussion of photographic print longevity in The New York Times: It Isn’t That Images Fade, It’s That They Can Vanish. The focus is Henry Wilhelm, one of the leading experts on printer, ink, and paper technologies and how they all affect print life as prints are exposed to light and air.

Of course, as a photographer I’ve always felt like it was a bit egotistical to assume that anyone would want to buy my work and if they did, would care about it lasting X number of years. However, once I started selling prints it did become a concern as I doesn’t want them to fade. Not during my lifetime anyway if not the lifetime of the person buying them.

Thinking ahead, if we want photography to be taken as seriously as painting or traditional printmaking as an artform, then we’d better get our photographic printing chops together and print things that will last. Which means doing the necessary research on this stuff which means spending some time on Henry Wilhelm’s confusing web site.

[via Dale Allyn]