Original Print an entirely justified rant against the prejudice of galleries against digital art and photography
by Mike Chisholm
2026
© 2026 Mike Chisholm
ised version of two posts originally published in 2022 in Mike's blog:
https://idiotic-hat.blogspot.com/
al artwork, there still seems to be a espread prejudice against digital prints in ain corners of the art world, one which ms to overlap with a similar prejudice nst photography. If you look at the terms conditions of various open submission bitions, you will o en see wording like e real recent examples:
work must be original (all prints must be hand led and NOT giclée). We regret we do not accept otography or other digital art forms.
eptable media: Paintings, drawings, pastels, ginal framed prints (excluding photography).
bmissions of work are invited from visual artists rking in intaglio and relief printmaking. Including hing, lino prints, mezzotints, monotypes, ographs, engraving, collagraphs, woodcuts and dry nt. No giclée or photography.
mptom of the problem seems to be the of that word "giclée". Weirdly, we can me the Hollies for this, or perhaps Crosby, s & Nash, or – to be absolutely fair – their mon denominator Graham Nash. A keen tographer and collector of prints, Nash his guise as Nash Editions) was an early neer of high-quality inkjet printing, and of his team coined the faux-French term ée printer" for the adapted Iris pre-press AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
printer". I've never looked at any of those original Nash Editions "fine art" prints, but I'd bet that my humble desktop Epson inkjet (a SureColor P400) can knock spots off them, in terms of quality: things have moved on since the 1990s. The term "giclée" has nonetheless stuck in certain circles, and I've always assumed that it was an attempt to throw a bit of magic French-fried fairy dust over the honest but mechanical-sounding "inkjet" print, rather like referring to "cuisine" rather than "cookery". Something similar happened in the past when screen-printing was referred to as "serigraphy" when used by artists, as opposed to commercial printers. If so, this attempt to posh-up "fine art" inkjet has clearly backfired: giclée has come to denote some sort of unearned, spray-on sophistication, lying somewhere between reproduction and fake. In gallery circles it seems to reek of a scam, a way of cheaply and mechanically reproducing and selling an "original" work – most likely a scanned or photographed real painting – to multiple suckers. Which is ironic. Because, if I had to define what a "print" is (whether etching, lino-print, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AA
inal work to multiple buyers" would do ty well. A er all, every one of these ious "hand pulled" techniques originated he simple commercial desire to sell as y copies of a work as possible: just ask echt Dürer or that Rembrandt bloke.
what's the big deal here? From my distant emic past the phrase "petit-bourgeois fetishism" floats up. Reaching for my ent copy of Christopher Caudwell's ion and Reality, I find:
the development of capitalist production morselessly turns the cra sman into a labourer. e machine competes with and ousts the product of skilled hands in all departments and forces him o the “industrial reserve army” of the unemployed. he effect is at first to make him revolt against the mands of a “commercialised” market by setting up skill as a good in itself, detached from social uses. will hear such a cra sman admire an old Napier for example, as a superb production of skilled smen, and compare it with a modern mass duction Ford, which fulfils the same social rôle is cheaper. The old skill, although more wasteful human labour, has acquired a special value to the sman because it is the condition for his existence class distinct from the proletariat, and is set over against the market with its criterion of profit, ch is the cause of the outdating of his skill.
sion and Reality, 1937
deep irony is that, as each successive refinement of mechanical image reproduction has rendered previous techniques redundant for commercial purposes, so these older skills have become revered and incorporated into the toolbox of acceptable artist's techniques. Resistance to industrialism has a long history, but is essentially a series of tactical retreats in the face of inexorable technical advances. Scriveners, hand-loom weavers, engravers, and even silkscreen-printers have all trodden the long road to the safe haven of Artencra . Now, we can all appreciate the time, effort, and skill that goes into any well-cra ed object, but it's all too easy to confuse the value of, say, an engraving as a piece of cra with its value as a picture, and this nostalgia for difficult cra skills is a contradictory characteristic of the more conservative corners of the art world, especially where the making of mechanically-reproducible, multiple pictures is concerned. That is to say, prints. I have taken evening classes in lithography and etching, and – fun as it is to make marks of various sorts on a metal plate and to discover how to etch it and ink it, as well as how to work and adjust the press – you quickly come to appreciate why it is so AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAA
y expert but anonymous press operator. e, there are thousands of kitchen-table tmakers who rub their own lino-prints the back of a wooden spoon, but it's a h more expensive, complex, and, kly, tedious task to get an intaglio print lithograph just right and then to get it istently just right over an edition of, say, or more "pulls". And yet, despite the em attached to the process, only one e ever appears on the finished print. The mate value is thought to reside in the t's conception, the final picture, not the ter's labour in delivering it. The artist has ght that labour, just as a painter buys prepared paints or some starchitect buys in al building expertise [1], and thus, to all nts and purposes, owns it. It is just one ur-saving component in a process that lts in, what? Nothing more or less than of identical pictures.
mething very similar happened in tography. From its very beginnings, there always the suspicion that photography too easy and too mechanical to be idered "art"; all you did was point the era and press a button. Where was the ? However, in the days of film and silverd chemistry, every single print made AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
repetitive and tedious it was, too. That element of painstaking interpretive cra was what earned photography its grudging and still precarious place in the gallery world, even though, as with "proper" prints, it was always the photographer's vision that commanded attention, not the printer's careful realisation of it. Henri CartierBresson's name is well-known; less so those of the artisans of Picto Laboratoires who actually produced most of his prints, o en from less than perfectly-exposed negatives. But when it came to the undeniably mechanical business of making colour prints from negatives or transparencies – and who knows or cares what labs were used by the likes of Eggleston, Misrach, or Parr? – the gallery world backed away from the bad smell for a very long time. Until, that is, it became apparent quite how much money these glossy offences against handicra could fetch. Enter digital. Everything that was tedious, repetitive, and labour-intensive about printmaking and photography suddenly became straightforward, and the element of "cra " migrated back into the hands of artists who could create digital images from scratch and fine-tune them themselves on a computer AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAA
eloping and fixing, colour-wheel dling, plate inking and wiping, paper ing, press pressure adjusting – in short, whole tedious mechanical baggage of tography and printmaking – could be ied out without so much as putting on an -proof apron. Best of all, it could be d as a single, repeatable package: job e! Many more photographers and digital ts became highly skilled at the whole -to-end process, which could be done in comfort of home with inexpensive kit, with care could produce prints of great uty and archival permanence on a wide e of paper surfaces. So, naturally, the art d looked at this fantastic new elopment with profound mistrust, and e the usual tactical retreat. No "giclée" , thank you very much!
if the value of a picture truly does reside he artist's own conception rather than the anal grunt-work of transferring it to er, which it surely does, then why the bbery about process? Yes, printing a al image is relatively easy, from a nical point of view, but then so is wing: what could be easier than making ks on a piece of paper? A toddler can do ou may or may not like them, but anyone AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
digital images as opposed to something I might scribble directly onto paper with a pencil is sorely mistaken. But the gallery world is still holding its nose. So why is it that the more conservative galleries and open exhibitions reject digital art work, especially "giclée" (inkjet) prints? Apart, that is, from an innate mistrust of the new, and especially of computers as a tool for art-making? I have no wish to bash these self-styled gatekeepers simply for being fogeyish fuddy-duddies (oh, go on, Mike, why not?), and there are points on both sides of the arguments, as there always are. So here, for your consideration, are what I think are the major factors. 1. Techno-Dread That curious word "giclée" was originally coined back in the 1990s, apparently to avoid any mention of the dread word computer. That there are still people who are repelled by anything to do with computers, automation, digitisation, mobile phones, and so on, is hardly surprising. They are not necessarily tinfoil-hat wearers, but o en people who find aspects of the modern technological world uncongenial and deeply suspect, an honourable tradition that goes AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAA
puter-literate, but reject social media rely, and I consider entrusting your nces to some half-baked app on your ne idiotic. But to favour the procedures ome inky-fingered 18th-century engraver omehow more artistically wholesome the creation of a digital print is like ting that a meal made from ingredients ered from your own garden and slowked on a solid-fuel Aga range is the only way to cook supper. I suppose, to inue the metaphor, that by comparison a al print must seem the equivalent of a rowaved ready-meal. Well, yes, there is nteresting contrast to be made there, but aspirational Aga-artisan lifestyle is lable only to a certain elite segment of ety, and the rest of us have to do what we within the constraints of modern urban
he Snobbery of Scarcity ust anyone can own and enjoy a massduced object – a paperback book, for mple – then its value as a possession is to the sort of person who demands and afford exclusivity. A one-off painting by a name artist is the ideal, but a limited on print, made by hand, is an acceptable titute even in the most conservative AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
invented originally as a means to produce as many identical copies of a picture as possible, are now used solely to make these limited edition prints. The limitation of the edition is meant to be strict: a er the full intended run of an art print has been pulled – perhaps as few as 10 copies – the plate or block is (or is supposed to be) destroyed or scored through, thus guaranteeing that no more prints can be made from it. Also, wear and tear (not to say boredom and exhaustion) put a practical limit on the number of good impressions that can be made, especially from a delicate surface like a mezzotint, and of these the earliest impressions give the most faithful rendering. Hence the custom of numbering the pulls [1] and hence also the relatively higher value of early impressions. Although if you want really exclusive options there are usually also a few "artist's proofs" and hors de commerce prints to be had. By contrast, the "editioning" of a digital print or a photograph is always a bit of a fraud. Quite apart from the fact that an unlimited number could be produced, the first and the last items in the edition will be (or should be) completely identical. A particularly peculiar practice, but not uncommon, is the AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAA
out. The psychology of this always seems weird to me, but if scarcity is desirable, scarcity will be provided, one way or her, although I have my doubts as to ther anyone ever actually destroys their atives or digital files. [2] The harsh view ld be that the numbered editioning of al prints is redundant and essentially omorphic, i.e. an attribute which was tional in an older, original object but ch has been retained for essentially amental purposes in a newer, derivative ct, even though it is no longer either tional or necessary. The less harsh view ld be, well, it's what buyers want, isn't it?
enuine Imitation Leather spect a core cause of the rejection of ée" prints in gallery circles is the crupulous person who has scanned or tographed their own non-digital artwork, the original, and is marketing highity digital prints of it as a limited or even mited edition. It's very common, and h items fill the print racks of framing ps and small galleries (not to mention y and Etsy). A er all, if all you want is a picture for your wall at a reasonable e, and couldn't care less about its scarcity uthenticity – that would be most of us, I AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
exactly that way and sold by the Tate Gallery, no less. I suppose you could call it a "reproduction", but it's certainly a big step up from a poster of the same image. You do need to keep an eye out for pirates, of course; eBay, in particular, is awash with amazingly barefaced rip-offs (try searching for, say, "Hockney print"). 4. Skeuomorphic Resonance [3] There is a persistent regard for some kinds of mark-making over others. For reasons I appreciate but lack the insight to explain, the tentative marks made by the unaided human hand seem to resonate more than those made with mechanical help: even something as simple as a line drawn with a ruler seems to carry less artistic weight than one drawn freehand. The marks made using an instrument like a brush, pencil, or stick of charcoal directly onto a traditional "support" like canvas or paper carry the most weight of all. Although even those may ultimately be carrying the inherited resonance of an ochre pebble rubbed on a cave wall (archival life: 15,000 years or more, if kept in cool, dark conditions). It is no surprise, therefore, that all digital image-creation so ware packages provide a AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAA
ure, and even response to pressure from same simple stylus on the surface of a hical tablet. It's incredibly useful, ient, mess-free, and a lot of fun but, like editioning of digital prints, essentially omorphic. If you want, your picture can just like a pencil sketch on rough paper ured with transparent watercolour hes, even though it's nothing of the sort, I can understand why this makes some ple unhappy. There's a reason David kney's iPad creations look so berately, cack-handedly digital; it's a sort ruth to materials". At least, I think that's reason... Far worse than imitative hes, though, are the built-in filters that convert an entire photograph into ething resembling, say, a watercolour ting or a pastel drawing. You see these minations everywhere, o en printed o canvas, and offered for sale under the flag of a sort of "art" which they clearly not. I hate this stuff, and it gives both al photography and honest digital art a name.
llow the Money t exhibitions are intended to sell work. won't be surprised to learn that I have no erience with straight-up commercial AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
coming up with, in whatever medium they happen to be working in. I have mainly shown in, or at least submitted to, the less commercial "open" shows that are typically held annually by an arts society or organisation. But these people need to pay bills, staff salaries, and repair the roof, too, so fund-raising is an important aspect of what they do: that's why they charge their customary 30-40% commission on all exhibition sales. The temptation to show only work that, on past performance, will actually sell must be huge, so – if it has been the case that photography and digital art do not sell well – it may be that it is buyers, not galleries, who are the indirect source of prejudice against them. Although my own surprising success with a couple of digital prints at the 2017 Royal Academy Summer Show would at least partly argue against that (see Appendix). Which brings us to: 6. Taste It's quite striking how widespread an agreement there is on what constitutes good taste. Not so much at the stratospheric levels of art practice, where "good taste" is usually the unspoken enemy, but down here in the middle, at the shows where decorative art predominates, and people are looking for a AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AA
llenged") or that matches the new sofa; lly, both. I have to concede that the udice against digital photography can be -founded on grounds of taste: the ency of self-styled "fine art" tographers to produce garish, painterly h is regrettable. There's a certain unreal tte of peach and salmon pink that nearly ys appears in sunset landscapes, for mple, that makes me feel slightly seous whenever I see it. Similarly, it's easy ee why lovers of timid still-lifes of flowers seed-heads and characterful pots are lled by the way many purely digital ts converge on the sort of grungy, trative conventions that are familiar from m art and the covers of sci-fi and fantasy erbacks. To be honest, those grungy, trative conventions are a crime against d taste that I probably commit myself, a f the time. However, it would seem more a little unfair to reject all work in a ium simply because some of its acteristic content is not to your liking.
he end, imagination and originality are commodities, and conventional taste, h, and slick illustration are widelypted substitutes for the real thing, even if are formulaic and o en boring. Which AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
an expanse of blank wall. Making dull or even bad art exclusive also seems to work for some, especially if it's "hand-made" or the product of a famous name. But why some media used for boring and bad art are acceptable candidates for inclusion while others are rejected sight unseen is not so much a matter of taste as of discrimination, in the bad sense of that word. Unfortunately, setting aside the highly unlikely event that anti-discrimination legislation might ever be introduced into gallery submissions, the prejudices of certain self-styled "gatekeepers" will remain an insurmountable barrier. Although... I wonder if it might be worth proposing and even dra ing a Let's All Be Fair to Digital Artists law to my MP as a Private Members' bill? It would give her a chance to demonstrate that she's no friend to fogeyish fuddy-duddies, a er all.
mething I confess I mistook for an instructor's rating I first starting seeing prints as a teenager, as the onal formula so closely resembled the marks out of or a returned spelling test. Just 4 out of 100 for this erful thing? Harsh!
on't know how typical my own practice is, but I work digital image as a Photoshop PSD file which o en ins dozens of layers, and these files can get very large. recent project, making fairly modest 30cm square es, the PSD files are typically between 250-350 MB. printing purposes, the file is "flattened" as a high ty JPG file, typically 5-6 MB. Then the contrast, r balance, etc., are adjusted so that the printed output hes as closely as possible the image on the screen, h I might save as a third file. So which file is the alent of the plate?
u see what I did there? Morphic resonance? No? Oh
ed digitally.
"edition" of 50 copies by the end of the "Buyers Day" preview of the exhibition. If only I'd said 250...
Original Print
n entirely justified rant against e prejudice of galleries against digital art and photography
by Mike Chisholm
2026