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Welcome. Thanks for taking the time to checkout photogravure.com. This struggling medium needs all the attention it can get. And while Toky has done a great job interpreting the spirit of photogravure for the web, its true essence, like fine letterpress printing, can only be fully appreciated in person. Photogravure pushes ink-on-paper to its limits.
So, head to a museum's print viewing room or your local library’s rare book room and see for yourself. Find some examples of Stieglitz’s Camera Work or Coburn’s London and then spread the word. Or if you are in the neighborhood, stop by the studio and I will personally give you a tour of the history of photography in photogravure.
Thanks again for your interest.
Sincerely Mark Katzman Ferguson and Katzman
EXCELLENT RESULTS FOR PHOTGRAVURE AT SWANN GALLERIES’ AUCTION OF PHOTOGRAPHIC LITERATURE & PHOTOGRAPHS ON DECEMBER 13
“This was an exciting auction in which the synergy between Photographic Literature and classical photography was reconfirmed…” Daile Kaplan Photogravure highlights included several editions of Camera Work, among them Number 36, with 16 photogravures by Alfred Stieglitz, New York, 1911, which brought $28,800. Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Theaters, special edition, issued with a signed photogravure, New York, 2000 brought $4,800. And Roy De Carava’s Roy De Carava, with 12 dust-grain photogravures printed by Paul Taylor in 1991, was the auction’s top lot at $81,000.  Roy DeCarava’s (American, b. 1919) photographs have documented African American life in New York from a deeply personal and yet socially conscious perspective. DeCarava explained his feelings when taking the 1964 photograph of five men coming out of the church service: "The motivation at that moment was my political understanding of the treatment of black people and their response to injustice...I wasn't at the bombing, I wasn't in the church, but I knew what it was and I wanted to make a picture that dealt with it. The [five] men were coming out of the church with faces so serious and so intense, and the image was made."
 This past week I had a telephone conversation with Jon Goodman. We discussed many topics including techniques of conserving Chine-collé gravures, the production history of Steichen’s Early Years portfolio as well as the collective state of consciousness with regard to appreciation of the photogravure process. Jon has been fighting an uphill battle from day one. Unless one takes the time to study photogravures and the process, it is difficult to appreciate their significance. Photography is an art that is closely tied to craftsmanship. In many cases, it is the combination of the content of an image and the craftsmanship employed in its printing that brings it to life. The subtle qualities of a print have a potent influence on its impact. These qualities mostly operate on a sub-conscious level. Many casual consumers of photography as well as some active collectors are not aware of the potent influence that print quality has on the effectiveness of the art. Thus a lack of appreciation of the fine qualities of photogravure combined with steady growth of computer generated pigment printing techniques is creating a challenging environment for those, like Jon, who make their living printing photogravures. A function of this site is to promote photogravure so that workers like Jon and others will continue to be appreciated. Any information I come across that can strengthen photogravure’s position in this rapidly expanding arena of fine art photography, I will try to post on this blog. Below is a letter written by Paul Strand to James Craft in 1968. Mr. Craft was writing his Doctoral Thesis on photogravure and was able to hear some of Strand’s opinions first hand. I hope this letter serves as further evidence that many photogravures are not merely mechanical reproductions, but closely supervised original prints.
Continue reading "Paul Strand Letter" »
Sunday April 1, 2007
4 pm
Museum Lecture Hall, Getty Center
Emerson was an influential and controversial polemicist for a new movement in art photography. In this lecture Hope Kingsley, historian and curator of photography, traces Emerson's sources in art and optical theory and discusses their relevance to photography in the 19th century. Complements the exhibition The Old Order and The New: P.H. Emerson and Photography, 1885-1895.
University of Delaware, Homer Lecture on Photography
Douglas Nickel, director of the Center for Creative Photography and associate professor of art at the University of Arizona, will be the featured speaker at the William I. Homer Lecture on Photography today at 5:30 p.m. in 006 Willard Hall Education Building.
Nickel's lecture, “Physiological Optics: The Photography of Peter Henry Emerson,” is part of UD's Department of Art History lecture series, “Liminal Visions, Elusive Objects.”
Widely regarded as the father of art photography, Emerson was both a key theorist of photographic esthetics and one of the medium's most advanced practitioners. In his lecture, Nickel will examine Emerson's ideas about photography as a case study in how the history of photography might be conducted and revitalized as an aspect of art history. Nickel has won several awards and fellowships for his work and has lectured and written extensively on a broad range of topics in photography.
The lecture is free and open to the public. An informal question-and-answer session will follow the talk. The event is sponsored by UD's Department of Art Conservation and the Committee on Cultural Activities and Public Events. For more information, call (302) 831-4523.
 Well folks, photogravure has finally made it! On the January 29th episode of the Antiques Roadshow Camera Work was introduced to a nation of treasure hunters.
The owner of the 25 volumes must have been quite pleased to hear that Daile Kaplan at Swann Galleries would estimate their worth somewhere between $60,000 and $90,000 (hammer).
Surprise, surprise... The partial set is on the block next week (Feb. 15th) at Swann. Check it out.....
The value of the hand pulled photogravure is emerging as witnessed in last weeks aution entitled, 'Photographic Literature' at Swann in New York. The three top lots of this red-hot genre contained hand-pulled photogravures. Doris Ulmann's Roll, Jordan, Roll (New York, 1933) sold for $33,600. Alvin Langdon Coburn's, New York (London & New York, 1910) netted a record $28,800, and an issue of Camera Work, Number 36, with 16 Stieglitz photogravures was had for $20,400. More encouraging is that these lots were purchased by dealers, implying that the retail value of this work is significantly higher.
On October 6, 2006 Sotheby’s will auction (Photographs Sale No. 08227 – Lot 30) a rare inscribed and signed copy of ‘The Steichen Supplement’ (30,00 – 50,000 USD).
Lot description: (New York: Alfred Stieglitz, 1906), the complete issue, illustrated with 16 photogravures and halftones after the photographs of EDWARD STEICHEN, 15 plates signed by the photographer in pencil in the plate margin or on the page mount, the photogravure entitled ‘Road into the Valley—Moonrise’ hand-toned by the photographer and signed and dated by him in yellow pencil on the mount; the issue signed, dated, and inscribed ‘With the sincere compliments of Eduard Steichen Paris 1909’ by the photo grapher in pencil on the front free endpaper. 4to, original printed gray wrappers, in a matching gray board portfolio, 1906
View Steichen Supplement
 Welcome to Photogravure.com, the first web site devoted exclusively to the lost art of the hand-pulled photogravure.
Please take your time to explore all that we have to offer. If you like what you see, link to us and help spread the word. If you have some information that you think would benefit this site, please contact us. We are especially seeking news items for this blog.
It is our hope that this site will enable photogravure to achieve the status that it deserves as one of the most beautiful and important of the photographic processes. We also hope that in this digital age photogravure practitioners will be appreciated for their dedicated craftsmanship and limitless passion for their art.
Thanks for visiting.
AG, The International Journal of Photographic Art and Practice has published an article in its Spring 2006 issue, Number 43, entitled Fine Print Photogravure. Written by Matt Baily, the article offers a brief overview of the history and technique of photogravure and the compelling reasons that many master photographers are turning to it before the much more accessible digital options available today. Matt currently works with one of today's leaders in photogravure printing, Paul Taylor at the Renaissance Press.
 Acknowledging the rapidly growing interest in rare photobooks, Christie’s is holing its first ever photo book auction (RARE PHOTOBOOKS, Sale 7228 May 18, 2006, London, King Street). The sale contains many fine examples of rare books illustrated with hand-pulled photogravures including Laure Albin-Guillot’s, Micrographie Decorative (4,000 - 6,000 British pounds) and Alvin Langdon Coburn’s, A Door in the Wall and Other Stories (1,000-1,500 British pounds). A highlight of the auction is a rare, signed first edition of The Steichen Book, published in 1906 (40,000-60,000 British pounds). The book contains 29 photogravures of Steichen’s best work including The Pond- Moonrise which recently set the world record price for a photograph when it sold for $2,928,000.
Jon Goodman Photogravure and the Heron Press have announced the publication of PHOTOGRAPHING IN HIGH PLACES, a portfolio of ten photogravures by Bradford Washburn. Bradford Washburn, photographer, mountain climber, cartographer, explorer and museum director spent over four decades making photographs in the high places of the Alaska Range and the Yukon. Working with a large format aerial camera Washburn made astonishing images from on the ground and in the air of places that few if any had seen before his expeditions. PHOTOGRAPHING IN HIGH PLACES presents a collection of ten of these images as photogravures made from Bradford Washburn’s original negatives by Jon Goodman. The 10 x 13” plates are exquisitely printed on 17 x 20” Somerset paper accompanied by a text by Martha Sandweiss. 
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