I printed it on ummmm....I dunno....

This is simply a rant.

Last night I hit a few openings in town.

At one gallery, I saw some great prints by Larry Wiese. Really nice work. I enjoyed them immensely. They were, accurately labeled, "silver gelatin".

At the same gallery some other artists had prints for perusal.

Never in my life have I seen so many different ways to deal with digital output!

It is, and I honestly believe this, like nobody has set the standard yet by which to describe digital output methods.

E.g.

"Digital Frontier Print"
"Digital Frontier C-41 Print"
"Frontier C Print"

Etc. etc.

Now I know this is nitpicky, but could SOMEONE JUST PICK SOMETHING!

How about "digital C print"?

It describes Frontier technology as well as a few other methods out there.
It is simple. It is basic.

It tells me all I need to know.

If it is an inkjet print I need to know two things -
1 - That it is an inkjet print
2 - If it is "archival" (loose term here, but we need to weed out the stuff that came off a "Free with every Dell" printer)

That is it.

I don't need to know who made the printer. I don't need to know the model number of the printer.

I mean nobody is saying "Durst silver gelatin," or "Photographers Formulary printing frame (birch)."

O.k. Rant over.

See what messing with digital will get you?.....

I think this just reflects the rapidly evolving, digital printing landscape - no more - no less.

I have to admit that I'm not against digital printing, especially when pigments are used and especially for colour. At long last there may be a way to easily produce colour prints that are stable and since the introduction of the giclee print in galleries, I can see that the quality easily rivals conventional C-prints. BW prints are another matter, but being a lover of photo books and book printing (which uses ink) I can see a time when I'll be satisfied with good inkjet BW prints. Because they are ink they are not the same as silver but can stand side by side as an alternative.

Hey...there's an idea. Perhaps adding LPL or Beseler or Omega/ Nikon, Rodenstock, Schneider to the too simple "silver gelatin" print can justify raising the price a few bucks. Yup! Marketing!!!

Digital output is rapidly changing, I am afraid you are going to have to suffer a bit until the technology matures more. A Frontier is just a machine that produces a print. To call a print a
"Digital Frontier Print"
"Digital Frontier C-41 Print"
"Frontier C Print"
screams amateur in my book. What kind of gallery was this?

One that wasn't big on vetting.

It is a smaller gallery in town, but like I said, they had the Larry Wiese stuff which was some great work. These prints were all matted ones that one had to peruse. I have a feeling, since all the labels were different, that the artists made them themselves and dropped the stuff off.

I've been laughing at print descriptions for 30 years. The first time I saw "silver gelatin print" I about fell over laughing, and thought "how pretentious." Then I saw "chromogenic" print for a color C-print, and then "dye destruction print" for an Ilfochrome. I've come to the conclusion that describing the print process may be okay since it follows the tradition of both non-photographic and photographic print making: lithograph, etching, monotype, collotype, palladium print, VanDyke print, gum bichromate print - you get the idea.

If you can accept the descriptions of wet darkroom technology - you'll have to give the digital folks a little slack while they sort out the terminology for a digitally created print.

Giclee is sooo stupid (sorry Graham Nash but it's true) and is really only applicable for a print from an Iris printer since that's what the term was coined for originally. I kind of like "pigment print" for an inkjet print using archival pigment inks.

As for the descriptions you've mentioned - digital C-Print works for me if it's from a LightJet, Lambda, Frontier, etc. - even "digigraph" or maybe "digitype" would be okay.

The rule should be if you can't pronounce "giclee", then you can't use it.

Of course this would rule out 97% of the current users....

I read a description the origin of Giclee and the funny part is that as a French term its commonly used to describe the 'money shot' in French porn

Well, I always have felt that digital is cheap and dirty....

Robert Kennedy said:

The rule should be if you can't pronounce "giclee", then you can't use it.

Of course this would rule out 97% of the current users....

Click to expand...

There aren't many users of Iris printers - so ruling out 97% would probably be about 500 people at this point in time.

Oh, I can pronounce "zhee-clay" but, why would I want to? Since it's a French-based word, I feel like I need to spit or wash my mouth out after saying it.

Mostly, there are no current users for that word since Iris printers are fast going away. No parts, no service & the new generation of variable droplet size, large format, professional printers in the $5k price range have rendered the over $20k Iris obsolete. In Albuquerque, I know of two Iris printers still in use compared to hundreds of 7600 / 9600 Epsons.

The entire story how "giclee" was coined is hilarious - an exercise in pretention for sure - and even admitted as being so by the person that made up the word. They were just trying to get a more "high class" sounding word for gallery acceptance because "ink jet" sounded too pedestrian.