photomechanical processes

The photomechanical processes developed following the announcement of photography in 1839 perpetuated the principles of relief, intaglio, and planographic processes in new and innovatory combinations. They joined a plethora of reprographic processes, estimated in the middle of the century to number over 150. As markets and technologies developed in the later 19th century these processes underwent a degree of consolidation. During the first half of the 20th century a comparatively small set of processes began to dominate large-scale industrial photomechanical production. Later, the advent of xerography—invented in 1938—and a number of digital technologies have introduced a range of photomechanical processes that have brought mechanical reproduction of photographic images to a wide-ranging consumer market.

One basic premiss of photomechanical processes is that ink or a toner is applied on to a support—usually paper based—to render, consistently, a wide tonal range with high levels of linear detail. Coupled to these attributes is the need to produce long and cost-effective print runs. During the 19th century these criteria provided very significant challenges, and it was not until the early 20th century that photomechanical processes for a mass market truly came of age.

Two immediate challenges faced photography following the announcement of the photographic processes of Daguerre and Talbot in 1839. The first was to create reprographic processes suitable for industrialized mass production and, in the case of Talbot's paper-based process, to produce paper photographic prints that remained stable and did not fade.

As early as the 1840s, photomechanical processes based on the daguerreotype were beginning to appear across Europe. In 1840 Dr Joseph Berres (1796-1844) of Vienna published the booklet Phototyp nach der Erfindung des Prof. Berres in Wien, illustrated with five ‘photomechanical’ plates created by the etching of daguerreotype plates with nitric acid. Berres distributed copies of this title, and sample prints, across Europe. However, only a print run of c.200 was possible from the silver-plated copper plates.

Others followed Berres's lead. In Paris, Dr Alfred Donné (1801-78) and Armand-Hippolyte-Louis Fizeau (1819-96) both developed photogravure processes based on the daguerreotype. Fizeau's process was used to create illustrations for the serial publication Excursions daguerriennes: vues et monuments les plus remarquables du globe (1840-4). In 1841, in London, Sir William Grove (1811-96) announced his photogalvano-caustic etching process.

By the 1850s, such was the concern for the future of photographic paper prints that in both France and Britain competitions to find both solutions to the impermanence of photographic prints and industrial processes for mass production were created. In France, between 1856 and 1867, Albert, duc de Luynes (1802-67) sponsored a ‘petit prix’ for the creation of a permanent photographic print process and a ‘grand prix’ for the creation of a photomechanical process. The French chemical engineer Alphonse Poitevin won both prizes.

During the 1850s and 1860s a significant number of photomechanical processes were introduced. However, they all achieved comparatively limited success.

In 1852 Talbot patented his steel etching process, and subsequently an improved photogravure process that he called photoglyphic engraving (1858). Talbot also developed the principle of breaking up the image into lines and dots (a so-called ‘screen’), which forms the basis of photogravure screened intaglio printing plates, to produce half-tone printed images.

In the late 1850s there was significant research into photo-planographic processes. The first important experiments were undertaken in France by Joseph Lemercier (1803-87) together with Lerebours, Barreswil, and Davanne, and the results published in 1852. Poitevin patented a photolithographic process in 1855 that could provide up to 700 impressions from one stone. This process was used for book illustration, such as the 44 plates in Choix des terres cuites antiques du cabinet de M. le vicomte Hte. de Janzé (1857). Poitevin's process was also used in combination with chromolithography to produce colour illustrations included in two volumes of plates accompanying Jules Labarte's Histoire des arts industriels (1864). However, photolithography probably had its greatest impact in the 19th century on the reproduction of line drawings such as architects' drawings and plans.

In 1859 in England, Colonel Sir Henry James (1803-77) of the Ordnance Survey Office introduced his photo-planographic process called photozincography, in which zinc printing plates could be wrapped around the cylinder of rotary printing presses, thereby enabling mass production of prints. At the same time, in Australia, John Walter Osborne (1828-1902) announced a similar process and Eduard Asser (1809-94) in the Netherlands developed his process of ‘indirect photolithography’. In Britain, the politics involved in its funding dictated that the primary application of James's process lay in its reproduction of maps, and the inventor regularly pointed out that photozincography reduced the cost of map-making by several thousand pounds a year. From 1865 the process was extensively used to reproduce historical and illuminated manuscripts in the national collections.

The 1850s also saw a number of failed attempts to commercialize photomechanical processes. In 1855 Paul Pretsch (1808-73), who had worked in the Imperial Printing Office in Vienna, founded the Photo-Galvanographic Company in Islington, London. This aimed to exploit Pretsch's photo-galvanographic process that used a copper intaglio plate produced by galvanoplasty. Although Roger Fenton was appointed chief photographer and manager of the company's photographic department, the company had closed by 1858.

The Woodburytype was extensively used for book and periodical illustration during the last quarter of the 19th century. While it gave rich images with a fine tonal range it was highly labour intensive to produce, each print needing to be trimmed and then pasted on to the page it illustrated. It was also unable to handle both image and text. One of its more esoteric uses was by Léon Vidal (1834-1906), who in 1875 perfected his photochromie colour printing system, which combined the Woodburytype and chromolithography.

Poitevin had recognized as early as 1855 the underlying principles of the continuous-tone collotype process. In the late 1860s Joseph Albert of Munich significantly improved it, introduced the rotary collotype in 1873, and in the following year made the first colour collotype. The collotype remained popular until the 1970s. However, as with the Woodburytype process, it could not print both image and text together.

The photogravure process introduced by Karel Klič (1841-1926) in 1879 is generally credited as one of the major milestones in modern photomechanical reproduction. In the 1890s he introduced rotogravure in which printing could be from cylinders on fast presses. Eduard Mertens (1860-1919) invented a rotogravure process in 1904 and in 1910 his presses produced a landmark, the first rotogravure images to appear in a newspaper, the Freiburger Zeitung. In 1912 the Illustrated London News adopted the process.

During the 20th century there was a consolidation of photomechanical processes. The use of the collotype and photogravure declined while, from the late 1950s, offset lithography came to dominate and now represents more than 50 per cent of all printing.

— Anthony Hamber

Bibliography

• Eder, J. M., History of Photography (1968).
• Nadeau, L., Encyclopedia of Printing, Photographic, and Photomechanical Processes (2 vols., 1989-90).
• Aubenas, S., D'encre et de charbon: le concours photographique du duc de Luynes 1856-1867 (1994).
• Grivel, C., et al. (eds.), Die Eroberung der Bilder (2003).
• Wright, H. E., ‘Photography in the Printing Press: The Photomechanical Revolution’, in B. Finn (ed.), Representing Pictures (2004)