07/15/2025
I started EcoVisualLab in 2007 following the re-diagnosis of my late wife, Stephanie with stage IV breast cancer, a result of massive early life exposure to DDT. Stephanie passed away fifteen years ago in August of 2010. After her diagnosis, I was determined to find a better, healthier way to make photographic prints without bringing any more toxic chemicals into our lives. I also had high hopes that this might create a new, healthier paradigm in photography.
Since the beginning of EcoVisualLab, I have personally printed thousands of highly sustainable prints, using entirely VOC-free inks, on papers made from the reclaimed fibers from cottonseed oil manufacturing - a cooking product - essentially food grade cotton. Prints made by EcoVisualLab have been displayed in galleries worldwide, The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, The Griffin Museum of Photography, The Smithsonian Museums, The Maine Museum of Photography, in health oriented hospitality facilities throughout the US, in the personal collections of museum and gallery curators, and on the walls and in the portfolios of dozens of photographers.
I became highly proficient in color management and the use of aqueous pigmented inkjet technology using products manufactured by Epson, HP and with the generous support of Canon. We worked with Jon Cone to help bring his Piezography B&W system to the market, the first successful system to create full gamut B&W ink jet prints. We subsequently watched the major aqueous inkjet manufactures develop their own B&W inks and ultimately, with the help of X-Rite i1 color management technology and a unique-to-this-day paper developed by Crane Papers, plus Canon IPF series printers, we produced what I consider to be the finest quality B&W prints available, prints that equaled or exceeded the quality of the majority of silver prints in virtually every aspect except D-Max. No darkroom chemicals. No elemental sliver. And our color prints remain, to this day, among the best available.
Though I have always been proud of EcoVisualLab, I have largely found that photographers, burdened by changing market conditions, an abundance of stock imagery, new paradigms in rights management, and a host of market challenges never really cared much about sustainability. They were having enough trouble just maintaining their studios and putting food on the table. And now, AI will put the final nail in that coffin.
The sheer cost of large scale communications - advertising and extensive PR - prevented us from promoting EcoVisualLab and the benefits of sustainable imaging to an audience large enough to make the business durable. It became a niche producer of the highest quality and most sustainable images available. For many years that was enough for me. I knew it would never make me wealthy but it was satisfying and put me in touch with some of the world’s best image makers including photographers and painters.
This past year, I essentially “retired” from commercial printing and turned my attention to the development of an arts-eduction nonprofit - teaching artists and art audiences - through workshops, classes and presentations. (I continue, temporarily, to print for a small group of loyal customers on an as-needed basis) It took about six months to gain 501(c)(3) status, which was granted at the very end of 2024. Since January of 2025, we have been organizing workshops and classes under the auspices of Human Scale Art Space (art on a more human scale). I am returning, at my ripe old age, to teaching. Most of my clients on the lab side don’t know that I received my Ed.M., a graduate degree in education, from Harvard University’s, Graduate School of Education, in 1976, when there we actually dinosaurs roaming the campus in Cambridge, Mass. As Executive Director for our nonprofit, I have been working full time trying to raise funds - plus planning, and implementing educational programing in the Pioneer Valley of central Massachusetts. I have funded much of the start up costs personally. In the nonprofit world, a benefactor is typically required to create a start up. We do not have one. Major grants almost all require a three year history. Finding small donations, micro grants, and other support is a full time job, as is planning and running workshops. Thus I have two jobs at Human Scale Art Space.
As you might have guessed by now, I am writing all of this as a long winded way of saying goodbye to EcoVisualLab, and we will cease commercial printing entirely on the fifteenth anniversary of Stephanie’s death, in August of 2025.
I hope to stay in touch with the lab’s clients, talented image makers all, and would ask you to subscribe to our nonprofit’s email newsletter. We will be trading our large format printer for a more practical 17-inch print system and I may be able, on a very limited basis, to print 17-inch prints for friends and long term lab clients.
I have maintained an image archive of clients’ images and if you would like your files aggregated and returned you may order a flash drive with all of your images, including the one’s we retouched, for a one time fee of $50.00. Otherwise, all client images will be deleted from our secure server by approximately mid August 2025.
I hope you will continue to follow my journey via the non profit’s newsletter, our Facebook presence, Instagram, and other social media. I would be eternally grateful for any donation you might make to the new venture. You may do so by visiting Human Scale Art Space at www.humanscaleartspace.org and clicking on the orange “Make A Donation” button at the bottom of the landing page. Please visit often. You may also sign up for our newsletter on the “Contact Us” page. I hope you will!
It has been a privilege to have run EcoVisualLab these past nearly eighteen years, since 2007, and I hope to stay in touch. Thank you for your support.
I wish you all good health. Keep making images and art. We need them more than ever in these crazy political times.
Sincerely,
Rick Colson
www.humanscaleartspace.org
[email protected]
