What do you call your inkjet prints? (2018 Edition)

[dalex]

I've been thinking recently about the issue of what to call inkjet prints to clients and galleries, and I'm wondering if there's any consensus in the community here. Seems like it's been a constantly-changing thing over the years, and I'm curious what people are currently using.

There were a couple discussions here back in 2009 and 2010 (I couldn't find any others, apologies if I missed them), which were quite interesting and often hilarious (my favorite: "pigjet", pronounced pee-zhay):

https://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=39196
https://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=42747

but enough time has passed that norms have probably shifted since then.

A quick sampling of usage by a few major museums shows the term "inkjet" has finally become accepted and common. Some terms they use are:

National Gallery of Art (Washington): inkjet print
MOMA (New York): pigmented inkjet print
Met (New York): inkjet print
MFA (Boston): pigment-based inkjet print

Don't know whether such descriptions are suggested by the artist or whether museums decide on this, but it's interesting to note they're all concise and don't bother with terms like "archival", "digital", or even "paper" and "ink".

What do you think?

[pearlstreet]

I am just calling them prints now.

[hogloff]

I am just calling them prints now.

Yep...that's just what they are. Why all the fancy names?

[PeterAit]

Yep...that's just what they are. Why all the fancy names?

Digital photographic print.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Pretty Pixelated Prints???   

[Ryan Mack]

Hand-finished micro-pointilistic archival reproduction.

[langier]

Pigment prints, Giclee, Prints, Photographs. Ink spitting. It all depends upon the person.

[stockjock]

Pigment Print is what I see used most frequently at the museums and art galleries I frequent.  Adding in inkjet seems unnecessary and a little distracting.  Specifying that it is a "Pigment" print does add some information about possible longevity.  Some commercial galleries go further by calling them Archival Pigment Prints and that has been my practice.   What to call the paper the prints are printed on doesn't seem to have any standards.  Some galleries don't mention the paper at all while others provide partial or complete paper names.  I don't mention the paper in the wall label or price sheet but I do include the full paper name on the label on the back on the framed print.  That is mostly to help me reprint it if that ever proves necessary.  If I were specifying the paper on a wall label I would simply say "Archival Pigment Print on Cotton Rag Paper". 

FWIW

[DougDolde]

"Pigment Ink on Canvas"

[MHMG]

Pigment Print is what I see used most frequently at the museums and art galleries I frequent.  Adding in inkjet seems unnecessary and a little distracting.
FWIW

Actually, from a curatorial perspective in the museums and archives world, the term inkjet is the most critical part of the description. Pigment ink versus dye-based ink also useful, "archival pigment" much less so because it usually fails to take into account any fluorescent whitening agents in the media. When the media contains OBAs but the inks are pigment, the print is technically a dye-pigment hybrid print, but nobody seems to get that, thus I've never heard that term used even in the museum world. BTW, There are also plenty of other pigmented processes in the historical context, e.g. the carbro process (note: edited for an initial typo in my first post), carbon printing, collotype, etc., so simply calling a pigmented inkjet print a pigment print is insufficient.

Museums that label inkjet as inkjet somewhere in the description are right to do so. Art dealers that call them "archival pigment print" are coming up short, IMHO.

kind regards,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com

[stockjock]

Actually, from a curatorial perspective in the museums and archives world, the term inkjet is the most critical part of the description. Pigment ink versus dye-based ink also useful, "archival pigment" much less so because it usually fails to take into account any fluorescent whitening agents in the media. When the media contains OBAs but the inks are pigment, the print is technically a dye-pigment hybrid print, but nobody seems to get that, thus I've never heard that term used even in the museum world. BTW, There are also plenty of other pigmented processes in the historical context, e.g. the carbo process, carbon printing, collotype, etc., so simply calling a pigmented inkjet print a pigment print is insufficient.

Museums that label inkjet as inkjet somewhere in the description are right to do so. Art dealers that call them "archival pigment print" are coming up short, IMHO.

kind regards,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com

I am sure you are right but I think it is important to stop this notion that the public has that inket prints aren't "real" and the easiest way to do that is to simply not refer to inkjet in the label.  I suppose that if there were any possibility of confusion with one of the processes you mention then identifying the print as an inkjet print would be more critical.

[BobShaw]

Museums that label inkjet as inkjet somewhere in the description are right to do so. Art dealers that call them "archival pigment print" are coming up short, IMHO.

Museums have an obligation to tell it the way it is. They are not selling anything but accurately recording history.
An Art dealer is selling something and their interest is to market it the best way they perceive to be the market at the time.

[MHMG]

Museums have an obligation to tell it the way it is. They are not selling anything but accurately recording history.
An Art dealer is selling something and their interest is to market it the best way they perceive to be the market at the time.

Museums were also at first loathe to collect inkjet prints or display them as contemporary art or to recognize any digitally mastered prints as a photographic print process for that matter. It took time. I have high hopes that art dealers will come around in time, too. Inkjet is not a dirty word, nor an inferior printing process, not even the early inkjet prints that were quite fugitive. So were the earliest Callotype (salted paper) prints, made before Sir John Herschel suggested sodium thiosulfate as a proper way to fix silver-halide sensitized "salted paper" prints for permanence. Today, these earliest salted paper prints are nearly priceless due to their rarity. Few remain, but some do. As Mark Twain is reputed to have said, "history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes" over and over.

all the best,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com

[deanwork]

"Pigment Inkjet Print"  is what I've always called them because that is what they are.

When I deliver them to the galleries and explain that they are made with the most stable pigments available today on the most stable cotton inkjet coated papers available, they say ok we'll just call them what we call all inkjet digital prints on all media, "archival inkjet print" .  They say that because that is what they read in literature from New York galleries. To be honest 90% of the art galleries and even museums in the US are not even curious as to what they are collecting and selling.

I gave up trying to educate a long time ago. All I can do is put my term on the invoice and move on.

Half the time when prints that I've done for premium galleries are reviewed in shows the reviewer calls them C prints. Whatever.

John

Actually, from a curatorial perspective in the museums and archives world, the term inkjet is the most critical part of the description. Pigment ink versus dye-based ink also useful, "archival pigment" much less so because it usually fails to take into account any fluorescent whitening agents in the media. When the media contains OBAs but the inks are pigment, the print is technically a dye-pigment hybrid print, but nobody seems to get that, thus I've never heard that term used even in the museum world. BTW, There are also plenty of other pigmented processes in the historical context, e.g. the carbro process (note: edited for an initial typo in my first post), carbon printing, collotype, etc., so simply calling a pigmented inkjet print a pigment print is insufficient.

Museums that label inkjet as inkjet somewhere in the description are right to do so. Art dealers that call them "archival pigment print" are coming up short, IMHO.

kind regards,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com

[Ferp]

Actually, from a curatorial perspective in the museums and archives world, the term inkjet is the most critical part of the description. Pigment ink versus dye-based ink also useful, "archival pigment" much less so because it usually fails to take into account any fluorescent whitening agents in the media. When the media contains OBAs but the inks are pigment, the print is technically a dye-pigment hybrid print, but nobody seems to get that, thus I've never heard that term used even in the museum world. BTW, There are also plenty of other pigmented processes in the historical context, e.g. the carbro process (note: edited for an initial typo in my first post), carbon printing, collotype, etc., so simply calling a pigmented inkjet print a pigment print is insufficient.

Museums that label inkjet as inkjet somewhere in the description are right to do so. Art dealers that call them "archival pigment print" are coming up short, IMHO.

+1 and +1 for "Pigment Inkjet Print".  My problem with "archival" is that it begs the question of which standard and who established this?  Without that information it's just marketing.  In addition to the OBA question, there are others, such as which pigments? Particularly given the uncertainties over the latest Canon inks, but also there are both good and bad third party pigments.

The term that I've grown to hate is "Giclee" which nowadays is just a pretentious way of saying inkjet, although mostly it only gets used for inkjet on canvas reproductions of oil paintings.

[Jane]

‘Pigment injet print’ is probably the best description, truthful but distinguishing ( and merchandizing ) the work as art, above the riff and raff of inkjet prints. According to Graham Nash, the term ‘giclee’ was concocted by Jack Duganne. Nash applied it to prints he made for artists of paintings and graphics.