Monthly Archives: August 2013

Quick History of Photogravure

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Edward S. Curtis as a young man

Edward S. Curtis as a young man

Arguably the most beautiful, challenging, and labor-intensive of the traditional photographic processes, photogravure printmaking is among the earliest, dating back to the mid-1800s.  Best noted in the work of Edward S. Curtis in his epic anthropological study “The North American Indian”, which he editioned from 1907-1930, the photogravure quickly gave way to more affordable silver-gelatin printing popularized by Eastman Kodak’s Brownie camera. Prior to Kodak, artists, the church, and businesses primarily turned to printmakers who used presses to render quality images for distribution.  Photogravure has come out of the long tradition of intaglio printmaking whereby artisan printmakers, working in conjunction with artists, would create an image by carving, engraving, or etching (with resists and acid) into a metal substrate, wiping oil-based ink into the grooves or pits created, and then running it through a printing press onto dampened paper.

While there are traditional printmakers still employing copper plates to make photogravures, most have moved on to use steel-backed polymer plates due to the quality, consistency, efficiency, and the more environmentally friendly nature of that approach. Polymer plates are both photosensitive and water-soluble, allowing the image to be etched into the plate using water instead of acid. The polymer plate method was introduced to the printmaking world in the 1970s by Dan Welden, a veteran artist and printmaker who discovered the fine art application of these plates, which had only recently been introduced by the semiconductor industry, where they were (and still are to some extent) used to cast molds for creating printed circuit boards.

Regardless of the technology used to create a quality plate, the true artistry and craftsmanship comes through in how the plate is printed.  The type of inks and modifiers employed,  the method of wiping, the level of care taken, the choice of paper, the amount of pressure given at the press, and method of drying and flattening the final print are only a few of the many variables that come together to create a high-quality, hand-printed, photogravure print.  More information at http://intaglioeditions.com

Minimizing Dust Specks in Printmaking

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For most printmakers, dust is and has historically been the bane of our existence. So much freon has never been released into the atmosphere as from all those cans of DustOff in photographers’ basement darkrooms — when darkrooms were more common. Spritzing negatives in an attempt to get that pristine, perfectly clean negative was one of the most important jobs a darkroom photographer could do.

Now that we’re in the digital age, not much has changed really. Sure, if you’re printing inkjet directly from digital you might be spared — unless there’s dust on the sensor of your camera, but even that can be whisked away in Photoshop, no problem.

For the alternative photography printmaker, however, the physical world is still a very real-world problem. If it’s not humidity causing problems on the East or West Coast United States, it’s dust, like here in Colorado. I have three air purifiers running in the studio where we make polymer photogravure plates. It helps a little, but still dust specks occur and when they do they’re likely to be in some prominent area of the composition like a sky, or the tip of someone’s nose. If it’s in the plate, it’s committed, so you take extra precautions, but what about if it’s in the ink, or dust that lands on the plate just before it is printed?

Here are some precautions to take to minimize dust specks in printmaking environments:

  1. Examine your paper for any specks before tearing and soaking it.
  2. Vacuum and wet-mop the floors and shelves.
  3. Staple plastic above your wiping area and press, if possible.
  4. Keep doors and windows closed.
  5. Keep one or more air purifiers running near your printing area at all times. Make sure they are blowing away from your materials, not at them.
  6. Make sure your rags, tarlatan, and wiping materials have been shaken out and are relatively dust-free.
  7. Examine the plate carefully while wiping to remove any chunks or specks in the ink. Use a clean, lint-free rag to brush off any remaining dust.
  8. Cover the plate with clean tissue paper immediately after examining the plate. Carry it to the press covered.
  9. Use a drafting brush to remove any particles from the printing paper that may have been introduced during soaking or blotting.
  10. Have an assistant remove the tissue carefully just before you put the paper onto the plate.
  11. Clean press bed with anti-static plexiglass cleaner between prints.

Of course, the larger the plate, the more surface area there is to get contaminated. Also the more white-areas there are, the more likely dust will appear there. The less time your plate is exposed to the open air in even a slightly dusty environment, the better chances you have of not introducing unwanted particulates to your prints.

At Intaglio Editions we strive to make photogravure-quality prints that are artifact-free, and that includes digital posterization, newton rings, dust specks and the usual list of pitfalls new printmakers tend to fall prey to. The printing process, whichever it may be, will always lend itself to the final print and influence it in some way. Intaglio printmaking is, after all, an industrial art and along with that comes large equipment, large spaces, and unfortunately, large amounts of dust which invariably, at some point, will work its way into your life, and your prints. I would assert that this very dust issue might be why most vintage photogravure prints tended to be of darker, more complex images, so the dust that does work its way into the prints is not as distracting from the image itself and it simply blends in.  People were also more accepting of it just being part of the process back then as well.