Canvas prints have been around for a long time. Forty-five years ago I ran a portrait studio, back before digital, when portraits were posed with purpose and I often worked with painted backdrops. Marry that look to canvas, and it added a painterly quality my customers loved.
That was forty-five years ago. Today, I avoid canvas. I photograph with purpose and want the highest resolution and color fidelity I can achieve, and canvas's prominent texture tends to diffuse the image. There are exceptions, though, when a specific textile serves a specific image. This photograph of morning fog on the canals in Amsterdam was one of them — printed on a fine-weave, silk-adjacent fabric that complements its softness.
For everything else, the paper itself matters as much as the image. Archival paper renders a photograph with the gradation in tone, depth of shadow, and shift between highlight and midtone that I saw through the viewfinder before I pressed the shutter. The subject dictates which paper I use — glossy, matte, or somewhere between. The nude figure below, printed on fine art Canson paper with its selenium tones, is a good example: it presents the image exactly as I made it.
