Richard Misrach (1949 – ), Hazardous Waste Containment Site, Dow Chemical Corp, 1998, 1998/2001, chromogenic print. Middlebury College Museum of Art. Purchase with funds provided by the Contemporary Photography, Film, and Video Acquisition Fund, 2004.026.

Also called “dye coupler prints” and “type-C prints (if made from a negative) or “type-R prints (if made from a transparency),” chromogenic prints form the majority of color prints made after its introduction in 1936 and before advent of digital ink-based printing. The term “chrome” refers to the origin of the photograph in a slide or transparency. Some chromogenic prints produced today are made from scanned slides or transparency that are then printed digitally. Commercially manufactured paper coated with emulsions containing colored dyes, enabled photographers to choose form a wide range of surfaces, ranging form matte to ultra-glossy. Easier and less costly to produce than the dye-transfer process, some chromogenic prints lack the color stability of dye-transfer prints or archival digital papers and inks used today and are prone to color fading.