Commentary on Color Photography as a Fine Art
Photography as fine art is only somewhat over 100 years old. Early masters such as Adams, Cartier-Bresson, Steichen and Weston created black and white prints of images that provided the basis for a new fine art form available for collectors. Since their early pioneering efforts to establish photography as a legitimate art form, many other artists have joined the forum. Thus black and white photography entered the collector market of fine art images. These early artists perfected their printing techniques creating black and white platinum prints, which had archival life when mounted and preserved properly. At the same time that the masters were creating their B & W masterpieces, work was going on in a color forum, creating carbon layered prints, then being replaced by dye transfer prints. The early carbon layered prints were good but very labor intensive hit and miss propositions and were very expensive. Thus very few prints were created and now they are mostly owned by museums. Eliot Porter in the early 1950s and 60s started creating large format studies of nature which resulted in large books (many for the Sierra Club) which created a new market for dye transfer prints in color, which tools were offered by Eastman Kodak. The problem with color photography at that time was that the photographic dyes used in the paper for enlargements, were quite unstable and deteriorated rapidly. The dye transfer process used layers of dyes, with individual separation of the image primary colors, which were applied to a stable base. This allowed for a more stable archival color image. These early dye transfer prints qualified as fine art, and museums and collectors purchased them creating a market for color photography in the fine arts field, joining the already established B & W prints. In the 70s through the early 90s, the dye transfer method was the accepted color print vehicle for fine art collectors of photography. Even so the acceptance of color images of photography never kept up with the B & W penetration of market in the art world, forcing many color photographers seeking greatness, to return to B & W photography.
In the early 90s, Bill Nordstrom recreated the old carbro process of pigment layering and using computer scans creating separations that were more accurate and predictable in matching his pigment layered color prints. Even so the cost of the prints were high and the market limited. Soon the company that he had formed ran out of money. In the late 60s, Ciba-Geigy created a new process in creating Cibachrome color prints (later Ilfochrome), which replaced the dye transfer print as a way to achieve archival print stability. The print could be made, through the proper mounting and UV protection, to surpass dye transfer color life. This then became the color image industries product for museum and collector quality. Dye transfer products were discontinued in the 80s. Today Fuji has a new paper and longer lasting dye product to match Ilfochrome. Yet the color photographic image collector market has not yet come of age. Today there are on the market inexpensive color prints of good images that will not withstand the erosion of time, nor be a factor in the collector market. This plethora of poor prints with good images at a very inexpensive price, will cause confusion to the collector of images, which will only be sorted out by the museum and collector markets over a period of time. Thus the color market will take some time to mature, being controlled by education and experience. Though a new printing method using pigments is entering the market with high quality prints at a very affordable price. The Epson printers using seven color inks with a pigment base is the wave of the future. Archival and easily created prints will bring very strong images to the collecter. Today the value of quality B &W prints can bring hundreds of thousands of dollars, while color has a little established market. The availability of good color prints is being controlled by the lack of craftsmen in the printing trade, as labor intensive handling and review of printing, are replaced by machines. Soon the whole process will be replaced by digital processing and print making, but it is my prediction that the fine color film print and image work that is being printed now will survive and flourish, creating a bigger and more valuable market then the current B & W industry. The fact of the very large amount of color reproductions of good images being printed today, will be reduced in scope to the good archival printing being done today, which is certainly less then one tenth of one per cent of the industries output, but will change using the new printing methods and equipment. Today the very good color prints are a bargain due to the lack of understanding of the difference of a cheap print versus the cost of a well printed and preserved print which has a market in the collector's future. The collectors market of today does not bear the higher cost well, as they can not discriminate a difference of value.
Lucian Niemeyer - November 1998
Mel's garden
Back to Photography Commentary
Back to LNS Art Main Page
For problems or questions regarding this web contact lucian@lnsart.com
Last updated: January 10, 2008.