WOW,
The term "Archival" again, yuk! This has been discussed ad infinitum and I'm sorry Mandy, your ambiguous definition is no better or eloquent than any other.
'Archival' is one of those terms that is thrown around, sometimes by people with little understanding of it's meaning.
Archival in this context means products that stand the test of time and are produced in a method that is PH neutral.
Isn't "Stand the test of time" ambiguous at best? Seriously, what does that mean? 100 years? 200 years? 1000 years? 10,000 years? 30,000 Years (some cave paintings have survived this long)
I doubt many if any photographers here or elsewhere will print a photo that somebody will want in its current state in 1000 years (a very short period of time, geologically speaking).
Diasec® was the first method of face mounting to acrylic. It was developed in Europe for the advertising industry primarily.
OT, I'm not being pugnacious, but am always curious why people state "It's from Europe" or "It was developed in Europe" do people say "It was developed in North America" or "I'm going to North America"
they are after all both continents. I do suppose some people think Africa is a country! Diasec was developed in Switzerland; my favorite country!
NEVER mount anything that cannot be reproduced. Shall I say it again?...NEVER mount anything that cannot be reproduced.
You can say it 1000 times and it still is nonsense! IOW, EVERYTHING, including the Mona Lisa can be reproduced and I mean so well in fact that it will fool 99.99999% of all people including all the experts.
Just look at the forgeries that have fooled everybody, need I list them? If somebody can duplicate a Da Vinci so well that they have to study and test it for years to verify its authenticity doesn't it become the "original"? I'm sorry, I'm not hung up on the art's history as most are, but rather the art itself. A Van Gogh is only worth $100 million today because of the hype! Many works by Van Gogh were burned, thrown out, put into storage, etc. because they weren't deemed valuable. Now the "pundits" try to preserve them because of their "value" :-)
Diasec, they try to sell it as the original formula to Coke or KFC, but seriously, it's silicone! I know, it's all in the primer. However at the end of the day, ALL photographs can be replicated and I can only imagine that in the future it'll even be easier. There is the rare (very rare) photograph that sells to some idiot with more money than brains for over $1 million, but it's not like the crazy art (paintings) world and never will be. There isn't a photograph or painting that can't be forged well enough to fool everybody.
"archival" give me a break, it's a BS term and has no meaning regarding the "art" world. Preservation, sure, I'll agree, we can preserve art for a certain amount of time, however as time has shown, NOTHING is forever! The earth isn't forever, who cares if a photograph or painting will last 1000 years?