A holiday story for all of you lovers of the C-Print.
I spent the entire month of December (so far) photographing a corporate art collection here in Atlanta.
Among the photographers represented were some very significant names in color photography: Meyerowitz, Shore, Misrach, Jim Dine, Andrew Moore plus several regional artists who work in color. All of these images were collected in the 1980s, all were C-Prints, and all had deteriorated to such a state that to call them photographs any more would be joking. The prints were in almost any sense completely worthless, unless one likes looking at faded, horribly color shifted images.
There's a possibility some credulous collector of "vintage prints" might be duped into wasting money on one of these prints, but in my opinion they were only worthy of the trash can. I have seen Shore prints in similar condition at a local gallery and wondered if anyone would be stupid enough to buy them.
Also in the collection were many B&W photographers, including Bruce Barnbaum, Michael Spano and others. Every single one of these silver prints looked like they just came out of the darkroom, not a flaw anywhere.
To be fair, there were some Cibachromes by Sandy Skoglund and a few others that have held up quite well. A bit of shifting, but not significant enough to render them worthless.
I can't imagine wasting my time and money and my life working in the C-Print medium, only to watch it turn into junk. (If you really want to make long-lasting color prints, there is a way to do that which cannot be mentioned here.)
By the way, Kodak Endura is crap, too. Trust me.
My apologies to all you lovers of C-Prints. Sorry to poop on your holidays.
I spent the entire month of December (so far) photographing a corporate art collection here in Atlanta.
Among the photographers represented were some very significant names in color photography: Meyerowitz, Shore, Misrach, Jim Dine, Andrew Moore plus several regional artists who work in color. All of these images were collected in the 1980s, all were C-Prints, and all had deteriorated to such a state that to call them photographs any more would be joking. The prints were in almost any sense completely worthless, unless one likes looking at faded, horribly color shifted images.
There's a possibility some credulous collector of "vintage prints" might be duped into wasting money on one of these prints, but in my opinion they were only worthy of the trash can. I have seen Shore prints in similar condition at a local gallery and wondered if anyone would be stupid enough to buy them.
Also in the collection were many B&W photographers, including Bruce Barnbaum, Michael Spano and others. Every single one of these silver prints looked like they just came out of the darkroom, not a flaw anywhere.
To be fair, there were some Cibachromes by Sandy Skoglund and a few others that have held up quite well. A bit of shifting, but not significant enough to render them worthless.
I can't imagine wasting my time and money and my life working in the C-Print medium, only to watch it turn into junk. (If you really want to make long-lasting color prints, there is a way to do that which cannot be mentioned here.)
By the way, Kodak Endura is crap, too. Trust me.
My apologies to all you lovers of C-Prints. Sorry to poop on your holidays.