Artist statement: During a recent artist residency in Finland I carried around an object, a cheap plastic inflatable globe. Every day, I breathed into it, I photographed it. I found myself beginning to notice its response to the environments I was situating it in. It kept surprising me.
Toward the end of the residency it developed a puncture and it kept deflating. This was prophetic as previously I had been purposely not fully inflating it. Somewhere along our journey together I had been too rough with it. It reminded me that the way I treated it had had an effect on it.
Also known as Giclee prints or bubble-jet prints, pigment ink-jet prints are generated by computer printers from digital or scanned files using dye-based or pigment-based inks. A series of nozzles spray tiny droplets of ink onto the paper surface in a precise pattern that corresponds to the digital image file. In dye-based prints the ink soaks into the paper, whereas in pigment-based prints the ink rests and dries on top of the paper surface.
Whilst the term is broad, pigment ink-jet prints have come to be associated with prints produced on fine art papers. They are the most versatile and archival method of printing available to photographers today. A wide variety of material on which an image can be printed with such inks are available, including various textures and finishes such as matte photo paper, watercolour paper, cotton canvas or pre-coated canvas.
