the man who told me my prints would "keep better" if I laminated them

Yesterday a man watched me hang a cyanotype to dry at the market stall and asked if I'd considered laminating them "so they'd last longer."

Laminating. The Prussian blue, the paper that's been soaked in the same Atlantic water my father worked in, and he wants me to run it through a plastic machine like a restaurant menu.

I told him the blue fades a little over the years and that's the point. He looked at me like I'd said I pee on them for tone. Which, to be fair, is closer to what I do, since it's seawater and sun doing half the work.

I've been thinking about permanence a lot lately. We fought the sea for so long to hold things still. Some of us held the camera. Some of us just let the light decide what stays and what goes. I know which one feels more honest to me now.

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7 comments

Dani Okafor·1h

oh my GOD. laminating. i would have stared at him too. you can literally see the sun and the salt doing their thing in every single print and he wants to lock it in plastic like a business card 😭

people really don't get that a piece changing over time is not a bug. like the whole point of working with light and water is that they keep working with you after you hang the thing up. the fade is the memory of it. i think that's actually beautiful and i'd bet your dad would've gotten it.

do you ever feel like the market crowd just... doesn't see the process at all? like they see the finished piece and think it came out of a printer. i get that a lot with watercolor, people think i just scanned a photo in. no, i sat there for four hours fighting a wash that didn't want to behave, but okay!

also the "for tone" pee joke made me laugh out loud, i love you for that

Roman Petrak·1h

The fade is the material telling you it's alive. Paper and light and salt, they're all still working. You laminate that and you're not preserving the print, you're killing it and stuffing it.

And no, the market crowd mostly doesn't see it. They see a thing that's finished. They don't see that half the work happened before they walked up and the other half happens after they walk away. That's not their fault exactly, but it's why I stopped doing markets and stuck to commissions. Different crowd, still some of the same questions, but at least they asked before they bought, not after.

You handle the seawater right and those prints will outlast the plastic anyway.

Inês CostaOP·30m

Ha, the business card line made me laugh. He probably drives around with a laminated licence and thinks that's the height of preservation.

And I like what you said about seeing it working in every print. That's the thing most people don't clock, they think the making ends when I hang it up. It doesn't. The sun's still writing on it for years, just slower and softer.

I should've charged him double for the lecture. Or offered to laminate his wallet.

Inês CostaOP·1h

You said it better than I could have. The fade being the memory of it, that's exactly it. I hang them and the sun keeps painting a little longer, a little softer. You don't fight that, you let it finish.

And yes. The market crowd mostly sees a pretty blue thing. They don't see the hours in the cold water, the paper moving in the current, the waiting. Half the time I want to hand them a wet sheet and say, here, you hold it while it dries, then you'll know.

I think my dad would've laughed, honestly. He knew the sea keeps changing everything it touches. He'd have thought laminating it was the oddest thing he ever heard. 🙂

Ramesh Jha·1h

This reminded me of something from my own work. In Mithila painting we use natural colours, earth and leaf and flower. They change over the years also, the red deepens, the yellow softens. I have had people ask why we do not use the chemical colours that will stay bright forever. And I tell them the same as you told that man, only perhaps less polite. The change is not damage. It is the work still living.

Your water and sun, my soil and plants, both are telling the truth. Plastic cannot hold that. Plastic only holds the thing still, and a thing that cannot change is finished.

I think the people who say such things have not let anything of their own age in front of them. They have not watched a thing they made become something slightly new with the years. That is a pity for them, not for your prints.

Inês CostaOP·41m

Mithila painting, that's beautiful. Of course the red deepens and the yellow softens, of course. They're still cooking, still settling into themselves. I love that you said the work is still living. That's exactly it, the exact word. My father's nets weathered the same way, greyed and softened in salt until they fit his hands better. Nobody laminated a net.

And you're right about the truth of it. Soil and seawater, they don't lie. The chemical colours would stay bright but they'd be telling you nothing, and I think we both want the thing that keeps telling you something in ten years, even if what it tells you is different from the day you made it.

Thank you for this. It settles something I was turning over.

Dani Okafor·23m

honestly the plastic line hit me hard. "a thing that cannot change is finished" like yeah. that's it exactly. i've been painting the same window in my apartment over and over for months and every version is different because the light changed, or i mixed the wash differently, or i was in a different mood. if i'd laminated the first one and called it done i'd have missed everything after it. permanence is just a fancy word for giving up on the thing, i think.

and the mithila connection makes me want to know so much more, do you paint them yourself or is it family? the way you talk about the earth and leaf and flower colours sounds like you've got your hands in it somewhere. i'd love to see some of your work if you share it anywhere 🌿