Digital BW, The Print

A mechanized subspecies used to appear regularly as the rotogravure 
section of the Sunday papers in the thirties and forties. Usually 
printed in sepia/browntone, it was a fixture of the society pages:

"and you'll find that you're
in the rotogravure..."

(A buck if you can name the song. Canadian buck). 

Photogravure was a feature of the most elaborate series on photography 
ever published in the US, the ten-volume *Complete Photographer* 
edited by Willard Morgan, 1940-43. Each volume contained several 
photogravure sections, each with up to a dozen illustrations, many by 
the great B&W photographers of the day (and the past as well). It 
was/is truly a wonderful way to reproduce tones, but Lenswork's 
sneering de haut en bas tone with respect to ink jet prints, and the 
implication that only a few little old clockmakers can print 
photogravure is pretentious and silly. I've seen many ink-jet prints 
from this very company of printers that equalled Photogravure. PG was 
dethroned by duotone printing after the war, as tastes shifted to more 
open midtone- and high value-reproduction rather than the rich but 
dark low values of photogravure.

Incidentially, if you think you have some of the older photogravure 
repros in your collections, a loupe will discover the tiny square 
boxes that contain and transfer the ink and diagnose the process.

I don't know what's become of the process these days. Perhaps Ernst 
can comment.

Bob Bollini

>
> I'd like to understand just how the photogravure varies the tones.  
I'm
not
> finding any really good information on that, but a close-up of the 
plate
> would probably help quite a bit...
>
> Here's one more explanation, a bit more detailed, but over my head:
>
> http://haleysteele.com/hs_root/learning/technical/index.html
>
> I'll have to read it a couple of times very slowly to get any
understanding
> of it.  Very bizarre picture as an example of PG by the way.

Thanks for the link. Very interesting although his explainations and
constant referrences to other printing methods I don't understand make 
it a
bit difficult. I do get from it that the ink density in the print is
controled by the depth of the acid etching.

Martin

Hi all,

an useful source of info on photogravure and other antique printing 
processes can be found on the book "The Keepers of Light", by William 
Crawford (Morgan & Morgan, 1979). Also Aperture, Inc. (www.aperture.org) 
publishes several series of photogravure prints by photographers such as 
Paul Strand, Alfred Stiegliz and others, produced by the Photogravure 
Workshop, located in Hadley, MA, and supervised by master printer Richard 
Benson.
As far as I know, the photogravure process uses variable depth etching on a 
copper plate (instead of a halftone screen), through a high pressure 
printing press to produce a grayscale print with oil inks on fine art papers.

Regards,
Paulo Baptista
www.paulbaptista.cjb.net


At 18:24 21/9/2002 +0000, you wrote:
>A mechanized subspecies used to appear regularly as the rotogravure
>section of the Sunday papers in the thirties and forties. Usually
>printed in sepia/browntone, it was a fixture of the society pages:
>
>"and you'll find that you're
>in the rotogravure..."
>
>(A buck if you can name the song. Canadian buck).
>
>Photogravure was a feature of the most elaborate series on photography
>ever published in the US, the ten-volume *Complete Photographer*
>edited by Willard Morgan, 1940-43. Each volume contained several
>photogravure sections, each with up to a dozen illustrations, many by
>the great B&W photographers of the day (and the past as well). It
>was/is truly a wonderful way to reproduce tones, but Lenswork's
>sneering de haut en bas tone with respect to ink jet prints, and the
>implication that only a few little old clockmakers can print
>photogravure is pretentious and silly. I've seen many ink-jet prints
>from this very company of printers that equalled Photogravure. PG was
>dethroned by duotone printing after the war, as tastes shifted to more
>open midtone- and high value-reproduction rather than the rich but
>dark low values of photogravure.
>
>Incidentially, if you think you have some of the older photogravure
>repros in your collections, a loupe will discover the tiny square
>boxes that contain and transfer the ink and diagnose the process.
>
>I don't know what's become of the process these days. Perhaps Ernst
>can comment.
>
>Bob Bollini
>
> >
> > I'd like to understand just how the photogravure varies the tones.
>I'm
>not
> > finding any really good information on that, but a close-up of the
>plate
> > would probably help quite a bit...
> >
> > Here's one more explanation, a bit more detailed, but over my head:
> >
> > 
> <http://haleysteele.com/hs_root/learning/technical/index.html>http://haleysteele.com/hs_root/learning/technical/index.html
> >
> > I'll have to read it a couple of times very slowly to get any
>understanding
> > of it.  Very bizarre picture as an example of PG by the way.
>
>Thanks for the link. Very interesting although his explainations and
>constant referrences to other printing methods I don't understand make
>it a
>bit difficult. I do get from it that the ink density in the print is
>controled by the depth of the acid etching.
>
>Martin
>
>
>
>
>
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