Love at first print, more than a half century ago I made my first B&W print from a projected 35mm negative (Kodak plus-x pan) on 4″x5″ Dupont Velour Paper in a not so light tight closet. This combination of projected negative and Silver Gelatin emulsion represents the overwhelming majority of my work produced it the past 50 years. It remains today as my primary print process.

Commercially produced or Personally Hand Coated in my lab, the essential ingredients remain same, the difference is the unique personality of each print.

The combination of silver salts and gelatin quickly became the preferred medium of photographers in the 1870’s due to the emulsion’s sensitivity to low light … by comparison to other processes of that era that required long exposure to daylight. This process advantage allowed the projection (enlargement) of the camera plate to a larger print. Prior to this discovery image size was 1:1 to camera and plate size.

The use of direct contact printing has regained popularity due to the ease of making digital negatives from inkjet printers.  …. more on this in another section.

From National Gallery of Art.

The platinum print process is based on the characteristics of light-sensitive iron salts, which react with platinum salts to form platinum metal. A sheet of paper is coated with a solution of these salts to make it sensitive to light. Once dry, the sensitized paper is exposed to light through a negative image film, developed in a chemical solution, cleared, and washed. The print’s hue may range from charcoal gray to sepia depending on the chemical properties of the sensitizer and developer. Various image hues can also be achieved by adjusting the moisture content of the sensitized paper and/or the temperature at which a print is developed. Further chemical additions to the sensitizer and/or developer provide seemingly endless options for fine-tuning the appearance of the photograph.

The first commercially manufactured platinum paper was introduced in 1879 by British inventor William Willis Jr., who perfected the process over the following decades, gradually expanding the variety of his Platinotype Company products. A chemical variant of the platinum process was introduced in 1887 by Austrian Giuseppe Pizzighelli and marketed by several manufacturers in Europe and the United States.

Unlike a gelatin silver print, the image in a platinum print is absorbed directly into the paper, taking on its characteristics. Thus, the paper upon which a platinum print is made affects the quality of the image. An untreated paper will yield a matte print with a softer and less-detailed image than one made, for example, on a paper that has been chemically modified to impart a sheen, such as the Platinotype Company’s Japine papers, first introduced in 1906.

Something new something old and something borrowed. This is a hybrid process of transferring a digital asset (image data) to a light sensitive material… in this case the digital data is transferred to a silver gelatin emulsion by light. The aesthetic qualities of the print are that of traditional “light-film-lens-paper” processes with no perceivable variation between prints, making every print “the same”.

I offer this print from original camera film images that have been converted to a digital image format. The image is then worked to the same parameters as would be available in the darkroom… crop, contrast, localized lightening and darkening and dust / spot removal.

I do not introduce new image elements that did not exist in the original camera film, this process eliminates wasted photo paper and chemistry and variation between each print.

The new standard in “Photo Printing” does not use light! therefore, eventually we will become accustomed to calling it …piezography? or photo image print? or digital ink print?  time will decide.

Whatever the nomenclature becomes the ink print will dominate the art world because this process of image printing has evolved into a wide color gamut and has been defined as having generational longevity. The newest ink technology can provide image stability equal to and in some cases greater than RA-4 Color photo image longevity.

Platinum Prints remain the most stable of all “Photo Prints” and most costly to produce along with Silver Halide in the same category of permanence.  I have come to accept all Art has a lifespan, which is a distant second priority to how it enriches your life, how it makes you feel.

In man’s quest for immortality there may be a new technology on the horizon that will provide absolute permanence to the images that define our existence, our emotions and define our human condition. ,,,, Until then the ink print reigns as the most cost effective standard in Photography.