Stainless Steel Reflections #3, Brooklyn. One panel of Diptych.

Craig Richards and I were talking at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies about the revolution in color print permanence since the year 2000. (See “Will it Last?”) Our conversation led me to appreciate the range of new digital tools that  enable photographic artists to have a more dramatic and yet finer set of controls over the image than ever before.

This isn’t about camera features. I’m interested in what the photographic art world calls the “controls” – metaphorically the palette of levers I can pull to create an intended artistic result.

Here are my top ten:

1)      Permanence: Permanent, pigment-based, color and black & white prints – my #1 by a wide margin!

2)      Size: The ability to make large prints. I can print 44in. (111cm.) high by as long as the roll of paper in the printer. Most silver darkrooms were limited to 16x20in. (40x50cm.) images or smaller.

3)      Impact: Tremendous range and strength of print colors and range and nuances of B&W tones

4)      Control: The ability to regulate the finest nuances of a color or b&w print or distort the qualities of the image in extreme ways.

5)      Mobility: The great light sensitivity of digital cameras combined with image stabilisers that reduce shake when hand holding a camera. Together these create the ability to make images under circumstances impossible with non-stabilized, film cameras.

6)      Surface: True matte papers with wonderful surface textures and luminosities. Prior to digital printing a truly matte surface on a fine art paper could only be obtained by processes so specialized only a very few artists ever attempted them. We also have a wealth of papers with satin, lustre and high gloss surfaces and can print on canvas and metalized material as well.

7)      Detail: The joining or “stitching” of numerous small images to seamlessly create huge pictures or panoramas of incredible detail.

8)      Dynamic Range: The ability to combine long and short exposures to capture detail in a scene right from the most brilliant highlights to the deepest shadows. This is call High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging.

9)      Depth of Field: The ability to combine images to bring everything into focus from the closet objects in the picture to the most distant. (Extended Depth of Field or EDF imaging.)

10)   Seeing or previsualization support: The ability to preview an image roughly on the camera back and then, less approximately, on the computer monitor.

Yes –some of these things predate digital. I’ve pulled Polaroids as an aid to seeing, used compensating development to achieve a type of HDR and physically joined series of prints together to create panoramas. Digital has made what was difficult, limited and chancy into elements of the photographic artist’s palette that can be used with facility and confidence.

I’ve heard the digital revolution criticized for ruining photography as an art by making it too easy. The same criticism was offered when the first Kodaks and swept the market with the slogan, “You push the button and we do the rest.” This criticism wasn’t valid in 1890 and isn’t now. Good photography is all about good seeing and feeling. Yes – there is enough ordinary photography to fill the Pacific Ocean. It doesn’t matter. Our revolutionary new tools give flight to the best artists among us, those who reveal the world with an extraordinary eye and deep emotional connection.

Warhol’s Marilyn, Pisoletto’s mirror, Visitors, MOMA, New York. Pigment Print 20x30 in.

Art buyers, aware I print digitally, have asked me, “Will this image last?” This question is almost never asked of painters, watercolourists, mixed media artists or sculptors, only of photographers. The question of, “ Just how permanent is this?” has been with photographers ever since 1839 when John Herschel developed the first chemical “fixer” to halt the exposure and development of silver salts coated on paper, leaving a long-lasting image.

Some images from photography’s earliest decades remain in pristine condition, proving that photographs can be permanent. However, throughout the history of photography there have been instances where certain types of images have faded or degraded almost before our eyes. These instances include the instability of black and white prints on resin coated paper, the rapid fading of early C-prints and the fleeting nature of inkjet images produced with first generation printers that used dye inks rather than the more permanent pigment inks. Thus art buyers are justly wary when purchasing a photograph. Due to these past issues, photography’s image permanence has been the subject of more intense scientific scrutiny than any other medium. As a result, ironically, we have more data about the longevity of photographic materials than for any other media.

Since the inkjet papers and inks have only been on the market for a few years, how can we know what their image permanence characteristics will be? Photographic images deteriorate due to three main causes, cumulative exposure to light, exposure to atmospheric gases and pollutants and residual acids or other reactive chemicals in the paper or surface coating. To find out how images will perform over time imaging scientists use accelerated aging tests. Sample images consisting of calibrated color patches are exposed to intense light over a period of many months– as much light as the material might be exposed to if displayed for hundreds of years. Test samples are also exposed to ozone to check for fading due to atmospheric gases and pollutants, ozone being one of the most virulent.

The “gold standard” of photographic image permanence has long been the toned, silver, black and white print on fibre based paper. Tom Willock of Willock and Sax Gallery makes this kind of print. I make pigment prints, using an inkjet printer. Accelerated aging tests indicate some inkjet pigment prints are now approaching the permanence of toned silver prints, lasting last hundreds of years before noticeable fading occurs.  This is a truly revolutionary, historic, development. At the turn of the millennium few inkjet printing processes even matched the limited permanence of traditional color photography. Today the best colour inkjet pigment prints have life expectancies dramatically exceeding all traditional colour photographic processes including dye transfers, Ilfochromes and C-prints. For example a C-print on Fuji Crystal Archive paper has a rated display life of 40 years. The inks I use, Hewlett Packard’s Vivera pigment inks, have a life exceeding 275 years and black and white Vivera prints exceed 300 years. This is the time until just noticeable fading or yellowing occurs, so the image will, in fact, last much longer if some fading is tolerated. Inkjet pigment prints are now pushing into the permanence territory that was once the sole province of traditional pigment based media such as oils, watercolours and acrylics.

Accelerated aging tests have shown it isn’t just about the inks. The numbers I quote are for the Vivera z3200 inks on specific papers. There are other papers on which neither HP’s inks nor others are very permanent. So it is the ink set and the paper that need to be considered together.

How is a photographer or art buyer to sort out the good ink and paper combinations from the bad? Much of the science of photographic permanence has been developed by Henry Wilhelm and his colleagues at Wilhelm Imaging Research. Wilhelm makes his research results for ink and paper combinations freely available on his website. His work, ranging over several decades, has revolutionized our understanding of image permanence. He has highlighted the issues, provided widely adopted standards for viewing and storage conditions and has compelled manufactures to compete to produce more and more permanent pigments and papers. Museums, including the Smithsonian, archives and artists around the world depend upon the information he provides.

More recently, Mark McCormik-Goodhart has established Aardenburg Imaging and Archives where he provides a double check on Wilhelm’s work and extends it with a tough, sophisticated test protocol. He also tests a more varied combination of pigments and papers. This is important to me because I can’t responsibly offer work to a buyer unless there is evidence showing the ink and paper combination is archival. Perhaps most important, Mark’s research provides clear data on what to avoid. As a member of Aardenburg Imaging and Archives, I can also submit combinations I’m interested in for his testing.

Artists now have the information they need to make good decisions about the type of materials they use and buyers can access information about the likely longevity of the work they acquire. My commitment to myself and to my collectors is to use only materials that are very, very highly rated for permanence.  In part this depends upon the choice of printer. Inks can’t be swapped among different brands of printers because the inks have to be so closely tuned to the mechanism that applies them. There are a few third party ink sets, but most of these are far inferior in permanence to OEM inks. The challenge for an artist is to select a printer that gives the desired aesthetic results and has highly permanent pigment inks. The work featured on this web site is now printed with a Hewlett Packard z3100 or z3200 printer using HPs Vivera inks. At the time I acquired these printers they had the best archival performance of any pigment printers on the papers I use. Excellent new printers from Epson and Canon are firmly in the same league as the z3100 and z3200.

Due to caution over past technical and permanence issues with inkjet printers, my policy is to be a late adopter, purchasing a printer only when it has had enough time in the market place for accelerated aging tests to confirm the quality of its inks and for other issues to show up and be corrected.  The goal is to focus my time on the art rather than solving the technical issues associated with just-on-the-market equipment. Thus I may not always have the most current machine, however I and my art buyers know I have well tested technology we can rely on.

Today the teething problems of the 1990s are over and the problems of inkjet image permanence have been substantially solved. Paper manufactures are providing a widening array of quality, long lasting surfaces to print on. I’m delighted with some new papers that mimic the wonderful surface quality and chemistry of traditional silver-based fibre papers. Never in the history of photography has there been such a finely nuanced array of materials to select among. Never before has it been possible for an individual artist to make truly long-lasting color images. What a great time to be an artist working with digital pigment images!

A note to buyers – it is entirely fair for you to ask the gallery owner or the artist about the permanence of materials used and to ask for specifics. With photography a thoughtful and scientifically supported answer should be expected. Some artists provide a conservation statement detailing all the materials used in making and framing the image. I do so upon request. With non-photographic media, where little or no testing exists, the only answer an artist may be able to give is something like, “I work with materials that are well respected in the marketplace.”

Rather than pollution, the Bay images are coloured by billions of apparently happy, thriving brine shrimp plus algae. So what’s wrong with this picture?
There are two things wrong. First it’s a monoculture. That means the salt ponds are designed to exclude all forms of life except those that, Cargill, the company harvesting the salt can put up with. Second, over 80% of the original tidal wetlands, which once lined the shores of San Francisco Bay, have been eliminated by human developments like the extensive salt pond construction.
Of course we humans depend upon monocultures – think of Alberta’s extensive wheat fields – for our existence. Monoculture agriculture is one of the innovations that lead to the growth of civilization in the ancient world and sustains our world’s burgeoning population today. It becomes a problem when it eliminates so many habitats that species become endangered or extinct and the biodiversity of our world is threatened.
The San Francisco Bay shores are an important habitat for numerous species including many varieties of migratory birds. The dangers of the human monoculture, all seven million people who surround the Bay and their related developments, have been recognized. Environmental groups and governments have been working toward restoring some of the wetlands for decades. Today the largest wetland restoration project in the western US is underway. You can find out more at the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration website.
The salt pond images are thus symbolic of our modern dilemma – finding the balance between drawing on our planet’s resources and maintaining a healthy, vibrant earth that can sustain what we draw.
I did not set out to create my images with a good/bad agenda. If anything my agenda was to be as unbiased as possible. However in discussion with viewers who assumed an agenda, I was sharply confronted with the question, “Should fine art images be judged by the degree to which they seek out the good or the bad?” I found Joerg Colberg’s comments on this dilemma enlightening: “Uprooted from the real . . .”
“What’s the point of photography when you basically demand to see a certain outcome before the photographer gets to work? . . . Whether we like it or not our world has become considerably more complex over the past fifty years, and photographers adapting to that complexity – instead of striking simple/obvious poses – is one of the many consequences of this development. Ultimately, we all can only gain from this expanded breadth of photography, because it gives us more space to explore things, and to see them from more angles than just two (“good” versus “bad”).”
To be fair to Ed Burtynsky, I am not saying he seeks out bad things. He seeks big, impactful things and leaves the meaning to the viewer. I respect his position when he says: “I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning.”

This is a great opportunity to make a winter visit to Banff, either for the afternoon or for a day or two. Willock & Sax Gallery has special discount arrangements with Juniper Hotel and Bistro and Bow View Lodge. Follow this link to book a room and take advantage of the savings: http://www.willockandsaxgallery.com/banff.htm

This show opening and book launch is part of EXPOSURE – the Calgary, Banff, Canmore Photography Festival.

How do you purchase one of my images? It’s easy. You simply dial 1 866 859 2220 and ask for Susan.

Susan Sax-Willock and Thomas Willock are the founders and owners of the Willock and Sax Gallery and they are my representatives. First opened in Waterton and now located in Banff, Alberta, their gallery is dedicated to their vision of presenting the work of a very high quality cross section of Canadian fine artists. Susan brings a background as an artist, arts scholar and arts administrator. Tom is a zoologist with an intense feeling for the earth and environment, the former Director of a major museum and a delightfully talented interpreter of the western landscape with his black and white silver prints; the ones centre-left in the image above. In my own collection I have Tom’s “Lenticular Clouds: Red Rock Canyon Road, Waterton Lakes National Park, 1983,” an image I find particularly moving.

If you travel to Banff from time to time, be sure to check the Willock & Sax website for events at the Gallery and Banff activities. Better yet, ask Susan to put you on their e-mail list. Just call her at the number above or  click here.

Jonah  Lehrer writes a fascinating article in the July, 2009 Psychology Today about what we are leaning about human vision and about how our brain interprets that information. Unfortunately the Psychology Today headline writer calls the ideas that Lehrer teases out “laws” on the cover. This butchers the scientific meaning of “law” and is a LOUSY thing to do. Nowhere in Lehrer’s article, titled “Unlocking the Mysteries of the Artistic Mind,” does he talk about “laws”. Instead he identifies ten perceptual principles of great art. Here are a couple of them; you will have to buy the magazine to get the rest:

“BALANCE: Successful art makes use of its entire representational space, and spreads its information across the entire canvas.

ISOLATION: Sometimes less in more. By reducing reality to its most essential features – think a Matisse that is all bright color and sharp silhouettes – artists amplify the sensory signals we normally search for.”

Will understanding the principles lead directly to you or I making great art? That is a LOUSY idea, something Lehrer acknowledges when he quotes V. S. Ramachandran, the UC San Diego scientist who had done many of the studies that form the basis of his article as saying, “Anybody can learn these visual rules, but you still need talent and training in order to turn them in to fine art.”

Is knowing the rules a good idea? Sure. Knowing these and much more equips the artist, and the art critic, with a more capable tool kit. Still knowing the rules only gets one so far. It’s the difference between knowing the notes on the piano and being able to make great music. As I write this I think of all those who have struggled to learn the zone system only to wind up with a closet full of technically perfect but emotionally dead negatives.

Whats more, the rules of art are mainly derived a posteriori. That is we or society first identifies a work as great art, then we go seeking information on why we respond to say, the Mona Lisa, the way we do. They give us no information on how to set out to make great art.

Art is fundamentally an emotional quest. Ramachandran, with his brain imaging, reveals a neuroasethetic and gives some glimpses of why art works. The question remains open, “What drives some of us to make emotionally expressive art?”

BTW – Art is the product of our decisions. In this context I’m enjoying reading Lehrer’s recent book, “How We Decide.”

I get excited when I see something in an entirely new way. I get almost as excited (and a little envious) when someone shows me something through new eyes – when they grab my viewpoint and shift it.

After reading David Campion’s text and reading Sandra Shields’ words, I’ll never look at the Calgary Stampede the same way again. Sandra’s article and David’s images, titled Cowboy Wild in the July 2009 issue of SWERVE Magazine combine to create an amazing piece of cultural anthropology – dissecting the mythic cowboy and the reality behind the legends that fuel Calgary’s annual festival. Unfortunately the web link to SWERVE only takes you to Shield’s text. For the images you’ll have to visit davidcampion.ca. Happily Shields’ words can stand entirely on their own as can Campion’s images. Together they have a chemistry where one plus one equals more than two.The images of Cowboy Wild were the subject of a major exhibition at the Art Gallery of Calgary during the fall and winter of 2008. Seeing the SWERVE article I was pleased by how well David’s images held up on the thin newsprint pages – even after seeing them at 20″x30″ in the exhibition.

SWERVE’s Editor-in-Chief, Shelley Youngblut, has taken a typical “what’s-on-in-town” newspaper supplement and injected a series of telling and reflective articles that sit at the junction among finely crafted literature, social commentary, fine art photography and documentary photography. In an age when thoughtful publications seem to be rarer and rarer – especially coming from a popular newspaper press, to see where Youngblut is taking SWERVE is an encouraging delight. It is worth picking up the Friday Calgary Herald just to get SWERVE – though this summer only July and August issues are being produced.

Both Sandra and David have an ease about them that makes everyone around them comfortable. This is so evident in the photography and the writing. David’s images speak with great force – at the same time they are not forced. The same can be said of Sandra’s words, words that speak with a truth and essence of people places and events that perfectly compliment David’s images. They make us look and think about familiar things in new ways and compell us to open our eyes to parts of society that, perhaps subconsciously, we didn’t want to see. More about Sandra Shields’ writing and the Shields/Campion collaboration is at fieldnotes.ca.