the thing that bugs me the most is the TiO2 issue. There are easy ways to detect OBAs but if a paper manufacturer has TiO2 in the coating, there's not an easy way to check for this other than to look for problems down the line. While paper manufacturers do advertise the use of barium sulfate in coating, they certainly do not mention TiO2. There is a group of Dutch researchers who have developed what looks like a simple test for TiO2 but it's focused more on the presence in paint pigments: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0026265X15003288 Maybe one of our Dutch members can contact them to see if this can be extrapolated to ink jet papers.
Reading that article (fast though) I think the use of TiO2 itself does not have to be that harmful for the longevity of encapsulated pigment particle inks. As long as there is no OBA used in the paper along with the TiO2. The usual OBAs are dyes (stilbene etc) so what is described in the article suits what we know now of the combination of TiO2 and OBAs, thanks to Aardenburg Imaging. In practice I doubt there are any inkjet papers with and without OBAs that do not contain TiO2 as a whitening agent. On the use of BaSo4, it was in a Sihl publication I think that I saw 15% content mentioned for that whitening agent. The only number so far and it did not tell whether it was per weight or volume, a percentage of the total paper structure or just of the inkjet coating. It made me sceptical on the "Baryte" branding of inkjet papers. It still is more an attempt to bring the old baryta analogue paper white and surface/tactical experience to inkjet printing than something else. Anyway the whitening agent industry has a wide variety of products that can contain more than just TiO2/BaSo4 in the mix. Zinc oxides, kaolin, etc are added as well and mixes like that get their brand or industry names we have no clue about.
Whether chemistry could be an answer to detect TiO2, in its different qualities, in the paper structure? I have to read it better but usually that is a messy route. I do not think the institutes involved will answer my Dutch requests either. There was never an interest in my SpectrumViz project from institutes like that. Sure it hardly can be called a scientific project but I still have to see work done at that scale somewhere else. Most of these conservation research projects aim at curing the problems with aged art/photography works and do not aim at preventing problems that will occur in the next decades. An industry like Akzo Nobel (mentioned in the article) today delivers whitening agents for paper production and the conservation products for the restoration of aged art works. They have the best knowledge of what could go wrong but as a commercial entity their goal is their next stock result. Requests from museum restoration departments are honored (sparingly) by governmental subsidies for university research. The character of these institutes is one of looking back more than predicting what lies ahead, by that creating their livelihood for the next decades. Photographer's collectives / associations seem to be inadequate to take initiatives on increasing longevity of their products. Outside the US nothing has been done with the disastrously fading Kodak / Agfa color print films and prints in the 1970's -80's, the same with the Epson "orange plague" dye ink inkjet prints. At least some class actions happened in the US, we stil have to learn something over here. Anyway that is also not more than some compensation for lost value. I wonder why a company like FujiFilm actually did more for the longevity of chromogenic color film/prints than EU or US companies. Something to do with their crafts tradition? So far it seems that individuals have to fill in the gaps. Henry Wilhelm did that decades ago. Mark does it now as far as his budget goes.
Saturday I was at a discussion about the archiving / publishing of photographer's estates. Initiatives are fragmented in what they want, some restricted in their goal by the conditions set by their financial supporters, some set arbitrary limits to keep the influx low (with to me quite odd arguments). In general the art photographers fell overboard as their work is not strictly bound by local area content in their images and on the other hand they were not commercially active enough over a ten year period. In conservation/publishing one group took the headlong rush into the internet cloud, more or less with the advice to burn the original film and print collection afterwards, another institute sees a decade of preparing one estate as quite normal for archiving, depends on the facilities of other institutes for cold rooms etc. And it wants all the rights on the material but has no plan on publishing. I would not call their financial structures as sound either. Best thing I saw was a private initiative of two photographers that preserved, indexed, presented in book, with loving care, the works of a deceased amateur photographer they learned from in the past. They take care of new prints, the sale of old prints and whatever will be needed to keep the work alive. This way it could also still be viewed as intended and not just seen on a display. The past has shown that B&W film/glass and prints can survive hundreds of years (including two or three wars here) with some care. We still have to see what a cyber war or just some amateur hacking can do to the cloud. Discussing media that can survive better in the future didn't get time in that discussion.
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htmMarch 2017 update, 750+ inkjet media white spectral plots
