Bipod

The gold standard is 100% cotton museum board.

Make sure it is guaranteed to meet or exceed Library
of Congress standard. Any product can be called "archival".

More information:

"Preservation Guidelines for Matting and Framing"
https://www.loc.gov/preservation/care/mat.html

BlueMorel Loc: Southwest Michigan

Not practical for us mere mortals who do not hang in museums. If I were I'd be printing with pigment ink, not dye-based, paying for professional framing and matting, and worry about off-gassing from my wood frames, plus only store in humidity-and-temperature-controlled environments. My costs would go up and unless my art sold I couldn't afford it.

Bipod

That's all true.

You can do your own matting and faming, but there's an investment (and space!) required--
always has been.

But you know, if a thousandth of the effort and captital that is put into automating cameras
was put into making photographs permanent, imagine the benefits.

Today you don't have to pay more for a car with seat belts -- society decided that safety was important.
And indeed some car companies in Europe made that decision on their own.

Kodak's papers were designed to be permanent (if properly processed). How to produce an
archival print was common knowledge -- even though it wasn't always practiced. Photographers
were widely aware of the issue of permanence and it was taught in schools.

Today, we used printers. But Leica, Nikon, Canon etc. do not design or build printers -- they sub it
out or just license their brand name. And nobody really knows what is printer inks -- they aren't
indpendently tested and I don't know any photographer who makes his own.

Printers are made by printer companies --- increasingly based in China. As far as I know, no printer is
designed or built in Japan. The ink cartridge and toner business are incredibly shady and fly-by-night---
there are a lot of countrefeit goods being sold.

Photographers are always better off when their gear is produced by companies specializing in
photography and/or high quality optics.

It's rather like the aviation business: all aircraft are designed and built by aviation companies. Would
you want to ride in a plane designed and built by Sony, Panasonic, Lenovo, Epson, Brother? Or even
Apple or Google? Personally, I'll stick to Boeing, AirBus, Cessna, etc.

We -- photographers -- made the decision to switch to digital. While the technology can be permanent,
the computer industry is incapable of caring about that. And tech manufactuers will do anything to cut
manufacturing costs. Counterfeit products are common. Inks are secret formulas.

Similarly, printer firmware is secret and nothing about the design is open or standardized. Even withing
one brand (e.g., HP) there can be hundreds of prprietary ink cartridges -- all expensive. Monopoly is
the norm.

As a photographer, you sometimes have to trust manufactuers. The high tech industry is renowned for
it scams, scandals and stock swindles. Trusting a tech company is like trusting Wells Fargo Bank:
they've shown themselves to be criminals -- why would anyone trust them?

Printers and inks are an area with the photographer has almost no control, and the suppliers are singularly
unconcerned with what is good for photography -- and very concerned with minimizing manufacturing costs,
maintaining a monopoly on ink catridges, and earnings-per-share.

An artist or photographer, no matter how great, can't get together with cut-throat corporations churning
out consumer junk and make great art. Nor can art survive the propaganda barrage of high tech
marketing.

Photographers need tools that work, materials that are permanent, and peace and quiet in which to do
photography. But above all, they need a market for their work.

Computer prints have a reputation for being low-quality, fugative, unlimited editions, and easy to forge.
That doesn't seem to matter to anybody except the handful of people still trying to do fine art photography.

Soon it will have been 200 years since the invention of photography. During that time, a photograph has
been a novelty, keepsake, record, imiation of painting, minor art form, and major art form. Only recently
has it become the one thing that dooms photography: unimportant.

Many people now capture images they don't even look at, or only look at once, or just e-mail and forget.
What actually happens to all those "selfies"? Answer: they get deleted after a few hours, days or weeks.
The digital image has become the Disposable Image.

Last year, German film-director and still photographer, Wim Wenders, was looking for a term for "this new
activity that looks so much like photography, but isn't photography any more."
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/entertainment-arts-45011397/renowned-film-director-wim-wenders-hits-out-at-phone-photography

I suggested "fauxtography" (sounds like "photography" but isn't) but now I think "camera play" is
more specific (meant to contrast with Camera Work).

Cameras their lenses are now just another "tech toy".