Black And White Digital Printing Part 6

The year 2003 was a turning point for the digital photography industry. The 1st quarter industry reports of 2003 marked the first time that more digital cameras were purchased than film cameras. Kodak, the Great Yellow Father synonymous with film, announced that most of their R&D resources would be focused on digital technologies. "Popular Photography" magazine changed the name to "Popular Photography & Imaging", and the October issue had not a single display ad for either film or a film camera.

It was also the year that Fine Art Black and White digital printing came of age. That year's new generation of inks, papers and high resolution desktop printers finally produced black and white photographs that could stand on their own, both aesthetically and in terms of archival longevity, with emulsion based prints.

As the technology has progressed, the acceptance of carbon ink prints (so called because the highest gallery quality black and white prints are made with predominantly carbon based inks) as a new and valid fine art art medium has kept pace. More and more galleries are accepting carbon ink prints and even encouraging them, and the endless and tiresome debates over digital vs. silver are fading into the sunset. The tide has turned and a new era has begun.

A Link To The Past

It is interesting that the most permanent of the new inks use carbon as the primary ingredient. Carbon was the earliest substance used to produce long lasting photographic prints. The first Carbon Print process was developed by Adolphe L. Poitevin in France in 1856 in response to a monetary prize offered for the first person to devise a permanent photographic printing process (from The History Of Photography by Beaumont Newhall, page 60). Carbon Printing in various forms is still practiced today by people who love to keep the old processes alive.

One of the key aspects of carbon ink printing is that it is an ink on paper process, not a light-sensitive emulsion, and therefore is more closely related to Photogravure than to silver or platinum. Alfred Stieglitz, arguably the most influential person involved in the acceptance of photography as a legitimate art form, thought so highly of photogravure that he learned and mastered the process himself, beginning in 1890. He used tipped in photogravures in the New York Camera Club's journal "Camera Notes" beginning with the first issue in 1897, and promoted photogravures as "artistic objects in their own right" and, apart from the journal, sold them as individual prints and as portfolios (from Alfred Stieglitz's Camera Notes, by Christian A. Peterson, pages 33-41). You can empty your savings account buying one of those original editions, and the photogravures of Edward Sherrif Curtis and others also bring high prices at auctions today. Ink based photographic processes are well established as works of art.

In a very real sense carbon ink printing has come full circle - a thoroughly modern technology with a link to the past.

A New Medium

Carbon ink printing truly is a new medium. The fact that it is an ink process gives it a unique niche and sidesteps the tiresome arguments about whether it is superior or inferior to emulsion processes. I love working in this new medium. Carbon ink prints have a unique beauty and elegance all their own. The photographs are rich and expressive and in many ways are better than my darkroom prints ever were.

I also love the name. "Carbon" implies permanence, and "Ink" places it in a unique niche as a medium. It carries a hint of romance, bringing to mind images of primitive photographers in 19th century Europe, Stieglitz and the New York Camera Club and the Photo Seccession period.

We are in a new era of photography and I for one embrace it fully. I am happy to see it increasingly becoming accepted as an equal by art galleries and the public at large. The day will come when gallery owners will proudly say, "We handle only the finest Silver Gelatin, Carbon Ink and Platinum prints".