In s3e31 of Platemark, host Ann Shafer speaks with Lothar Osterburg, artist, professor and leading expert on the fine art of photogravure. These are basically photographs transferred to copper plates and printed as etchings. (It's of course more complicated than that.) In this way, it is possible to get images with continuous tone, as opposed to half-tone, or stepped biting.
The results are luminous photographs printed with printer’s ink. It's a result that cannot be achieved in any other way. Of course, one can manipulate the plate after etching the photographic image into it. These hybridizations are intriguing, rare, and special. There are very few practitioners who are truly experts in it.
Lothar helps us understand the process, and we take a look at both his work as a master printer at Crown Point Press in the 1990s, and his own work in which he builds sculptures (often in miniature) and photographs them to create eerie scenes that recall the antique and conjure fantasy.