Name of directors or partners. Are they artists as well as printmakers?
Franck Bordas (printer and publisher)

Name of person responding to this questionnaire:
Franck Bordas

Date of founding of the workshop:
1978

What is your workshop like?
Located at the Place de la Bastille, in Paris, in a small courtyard, a very quiet place, just behind the noisy city. In the middle of the studio, there is an old huge flat bed machine, one of the last from the time of Toulouse-Lautrec (1890) capable of printing 1,20m x 1,60m lithographs. Different presses and work tables are placed around. Just at the entrance, the first room is our gallery, where we present our edition.

What media do you work in?
We work mostly in lithography, on stone or plate , and more and more often photolithography and offset by hand. Sometimes woodcut or linocut or pochoir (stencil) or monotypes and other mixed media. We also have a studio with three Apple Macintosh computers.

Are you public or private?
Private

How many staff do you have currently?
We are three people working permanently and occasionnaly one or two assistants

Do you have other activities besides printmaking, such as classes, exhibits, etc?
We are publishers of prints and artist books, and the gallery has a permanent programm of exhibition of prints or printed projects.

Are you print publishers, as well? Do you sell prints?
Yes print sales represent about 60% of our work

How did your workshop originate?
I learned printing very young from my grandfather, and I decided to open my own printshop in 1978. From then, I have not stopped working with artists in printmaking.

If you had to start again, what would you do differently?
I do not want to think about it !

How has the workshop evolved from the early days? Are you still doing the same things in the same way, or have you changed? In what way? My first studio was much smaller, with two old hand presses and few materials. Now of course it is bigger, with many more materials, and the work itself is changing constantly. Over the past 20 years, the work, the artists, and also myself have changed a lot, too!

Is your workshop unique or different from the others? In what way? Of course it is unique, and I think each studio is unique! That is the only way to do it, each person, each project, each formation is unique, don't you think so ?

What is your method of working with artists?
There is no really a method, each project is different. Each artist has different tempo and every time it is a unique experience.

Who are some of the artists with whom you've had the most successful (on all levels) collaboration?
I have worked with with many important artists, for me it is the most important thing from this work, a fabulous chance to learn from all of them! And now, with younger artists, I still learn and share my passion.

Tell us a bit more about the most interesting ones: incidents, anecdotes...
There are many. One of the most exciting experiences was when we organized a "nomadic printshop" with a light press and few stones in a Land Rover, to print a bestiary with Gilles Aillaud who made 50 lithos in Kenya. He was working on stones, making lithographs of landscapes and wild animals, and I was printing in middle of the bush !

Do you work with special papers? Tell us about them.
We are using all sort of papers, the french (Arches, Rives, Lana) but also Fabriano, Sommerset, Hänemuhle and a lot of Japanese papers. We are using industrial papers too.

How do you feel about the current moment in printmaking? Are you optimistic or pessimistic? Why?
Optimistic, because it is an exciting moment with new technical possibilities, and new challenges for "permanent printing" besides the "virtual image" of digital possibilities.

Regarding the marketplace, who buys limited-edition fine-art prints?
I meet mainly private collectors, who like prints and works on papers, and some very rare public collections of art...

What do you think might be done to make art buyers more aware of the true >limited-edition fine-art print?
Permanent collections of original prints in museums, and information about the work of printmakers.

What is your opinion of the current upsurge of digital fine-art prints?
It is exciting !

Can the traditional hand-pulled print "coexist peacefully" with the digital print?
Of course, new techniques and new possibilities are always good things for creators. And I believe in mixed media with traditional and digital used together. A lot of artists are using this technique actually and for sure they will invent new processes and new possibilities.

What are your principal sources of information about the world of printmaking?
Meeting people.

How do you buy your supplies? Local suppliers? Mail order? Internet? Local and international suppliers.

Whom do you consider the most relevant, best printmakers at work today?
The important think to know, is that almost everwhere in the world today, there are printmaking studios and printmakers working! From North to South, East to West, printmaking is today very active and often the best way to make creation visible. Some great projects are active at different places at the same moment. One of the good possibilities of internet should be to connect plenty of different studios and artists at the same time, to share, to show, to learn and to explore creation from everywhere! It is not a Utopia, I really think that could be possible soon, like a digital ring of printmaking information and activities around the world.

Anything to add?
Yes, I'm sorry this last part is in French but, maybe you will understand it better than my english? L'outil numérique et les logiciels de retouche d'image étant aujourd'hui couramment intégrés à la pratique des artistes contemporains, il est naturel de voir apparaître de nouveaux procédés d'impression dans le domaine de l'estampe originale. La période actuelle voit ainsi se rencontrer des techniques traditionnelles plusieurs fois centenaires, comme la gravure ou la lithographie et ses évolutions modernes (offset), avec de nouveaux procédés de traitement de l'image par écran interposé.

Jamais peut-être l'éventail des possibilités techniques proposé aux artistes n'a été aussi large qu'aujourd'hui. De nombreux artistes se sont déjà emparés de ces nouveaux moyens d'expression et il est certain qu'ils sauront s'approprier les formidables potentiels de création qu'ils permettent. Ainsi, grâce au développement des logiciels graphiques, on peut dire que chaque utilisateur d'ordinateur est potentiellement capable de produire des "estampes originales" d'une nouvelle génération. Estampe numérique, estampe électronique, digital prints, Irisprints, laserprints ou autres digigraphie, viennent ainsi s'ajouter aux "traditionnelles" offset, photolitho, luminographies, sérigraphie à trame aléatoire, alugraphie, etc, une véritable Estampologie.

Les appellations ne manquent pas pour tenter de définir toutes les techniques possibles, utilisées aujourd'hui par les artistes et printmakers contemporains. La pratique de l'atelier et son équipement permettent la recherche et l'expérimentation de techniques mixtes. Ainsi, après les premières expériences de report numérique sur pierre ou sur plaque à la fin des années 90, se sont développés de nouvelles méthodes de report permettant l'impression en lithographie de fichiers numériques reçus directement par internet.

Les premières expériences "litho-numérique" à mon atelier, ont été réalisées avec l'artiste Yuri Kuper, qui depuis une dizaine d'années poursuit ses recherches sur les reports photolithographiques retouchées à l'acide, ainsi que par Mark di Suvero qui a été l'un des premiers à imaginer l'intégration d'images numériques dans ses estampes. C'est pour lui qu'a été réalisé le premier tirage "e-litho", à partir d'un dessin réalisée directement sur son Macintosh personnel à New York, puis envoyé par email à l'atelier à Paris, pour y être aussitôt imprimé sur nos presses. En plus de "l'estampologie électronique", les nombreuses possibilités de la photolithographie et de l'offset permettent de mixer les techniques et d'obtenir ainsi de nouveaux développements du procédé lithographique, tout en gardant ses qualités spécifiques, je pense aux éditions Panoply de Jean-Charles Blais, réalisés en 1999.

On assiste aujourd'hui, dans les ateliers du monde entier, a une véritable effervescence de renouvellement technique dans les métiers traditionnels de la gravure. Les artistes et leurs imprimeurs, comme ils l'ont toujours fait depuis les origines, ne cessent d'expérimenter et d'inventer de nouveaux moyens pour une estampe originale véritablement contemporaine.

Atelier Franck Bordas
2, rue de la Roquette
F - 75011 Paris
Tel + (33) 1 47 00 31 61 Fax + (33) 1 43 38 18 31
Email: f.bordas@atelier-bordas.com
URL: http://www.atelier-bordas.com