Photogravure etches photographic images into copper plates and prints them in ink. Learn its history from Talbot to Stieglitz and why it still matters today.
Alfred Stieglitz's Camera Work, published from 1903 to 1917, was the most beautiful photography magazine ever produced. Its plates were not half-tone reproductions, which break photographs into visible dots, but photogravures, photographs etched into copper plates and printed in ink on an etching press. A photogravure has a tonal range that no halftone can match: deep blacks that look like velvet, smooth mid-tones, and highlights that retain detail rather than blowing out to white. Stieglitz considered the photogravures in Camera Work to be original prints, not reproductions, and he supervised their production personally.
Photogravure is a photomechanical intaglio process in which a photographic image is etched into a copper plate and printed on an etching press using ink and paper. The plate is dusted with rosin or asphaltum to create a fine grain, coated with light-sensitive gelatin tissue exposed through a photographic positive, etched in ferric chloride, and then printed like any intaglio plate: ink is worked into the recessed areas, the surface is wiped clean, and dampened paper is pressed against the plate to pull the ink out. The result is a print with continuous tones, rich blacks, and a physical impression in the paper that silver gelatin prints cannot produce.
This entry covers what photogravure is, how it works, its history from Niépce to the present, and which photographers made it an art form.
The photogravure process combines photography with intaglio printmaking. The goal is to create a copper plate where the depth of the etched cells varies with the darkness of the photographic image. Deeper cells hold more ink and print darker; shallower cells hold less ink and print lighter. Because the ink sits in cells of varying depth rather than in dots of varying size, the tonal transitions are continuous, like a silver print rather than a halftone.
The process begins with a positive transparency made from the original negative. A sheet of pigmented gelatin tissue is sensitized in a potassium dichromate solution and dried. The transparency is contact-printed onto the sensitized tissue using ultraviolet light. UV light hardens the gelatin in proportion to the density of the positive: dark areas of the image block light, leaving the gelatin soft; light areas allow UV through, hardening the gelatin.
Meanwhile, a copper plate is prepared with an aquatint grain of rosin or asphaltum, fused to the surface by heat. The exposed gelatin tissue is adhered to the grained copper plate under water. Hot water washes away the paper backing and the unexposed, soft gelatin, leaving a gelatin resist on the copper whose thickness varies with the image. The plate is then etched in a series of ferric chloride baths of decreasing concentration. The ferric chloride penetrates the gelatin resist at different rates depending on its thickness, etching the copper to varying depths.
After etching, the gelatin is cleaned from the plate. What remains is a copper plate with microscopic cells of varying depth, corresponding to the tones of the original photograph. The plate is printed on an etching press, exactly like an etching or aquatint plate. The Getty Conservation Institute provides a detailed technical atlas of the process at Getty.
The roots of photogravure predate the official invention of photography. In the 1820s, the French inventor Nicephore Niepce discovered that bitumen of Judea, a natural asphalt, hardened when exposed to light. He used this light-hardened material as an acid resist on copper and etched plates that could be printed in ink. His View from the Window at Le Gras (c. 1826), the earliest surviving photograph, was made using a related process. Niepce's experiments, conducted with the engraver Auguste-Francois Lemaitre, represent the origin point for both photography and photomechanical printing.
Talbot, inventor of the calotype paper negative process, wanted to make photographic prints that would not fade. Silver prints of the 1840s and 1850s were notoriously unstable. Talbot patented his first photomechanical process in 1852, using dichromated gelatin and a screen of black crepe to translate tones onto a steel plate. In 1858, he improved the process by depositing resinous powder on a copper plate, creating a grain pattern similar to aquatint, and etching with ferric chloride. This is the foundation of the modern photogravure process.
The photogravure process as it is practiced today was developed by the Czech painter Karel Klic in 1879. Klic combined Talbot's use of dichromated gelatin with carbon tissue, a pigmented gelatin paper developed by Joseph Swan and John Sawyer between 1864 and 1874. Klic's innovation was transferring the exposed carbon tissue to a resin-grained copper plate and etching through the gelatin resist. He never patented the process, selling it as a trade secret to printing firms in Austria and Germany. By 1886, the process had been published in full, making it available to anyone. The process is now called the Talbot-Klic process.
Peter Henry Emerson, a British photographer, brought photogravure to a high artistic standard in the late 19th century. His book Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads (1886) was printed entirely in photogravure, and the plates demonstrated the process's ability to render atmospheric effects with a richness that silver prints could not match. Emerson argued that photography was a fine art, and photogravure was his proof: the prints had the permanence of ink on paper, the tonal range of the best silver prints, and the physical presence of intaglio printing.
Stieglitz used photogravure extensively in Camera Work, the quarterly magazine he published from 1903 to 1917. The photogravures in Camera Work were printed on high-quality rag paper with careful attention to ink density and wiping. Stieglitz considered them original prints. The magazine featured photogravures by Stieglitz, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Clarence White, Paul Strand, and others. Coburn was particularly skilled at gravure printing and envisioned his photographic work as gravures rather than silver prints.
The Art of the Photogravure project documents the history and practice of the process, with examples from major collections. Read more at Art of the Photogravure.
Emerson's photogravures of rural life in the Norfolk Broads are among the finest examples of the process. His images of fishermen, reed-cutters, and marshland scenes used the tonal range of photogravure to render fog, water, and low light with a subtlety that established the process as a fine art medium. Emerson's book Marsh Leaves (1895) contains some of the most atmospheric photogravures ever printed.
Stieglitz used photogravure for his own photographs and for reproducing the work of others in Camera Work. His photogravure of The Steerage (1907), one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century, was published in Camera Work in 1911. The gravure version has a tonal depth and physical presence that the silver print original does not quite match.
Coburn was a fine gravure printer who made his own plates and supervised their printing. His photogravures of New York, London, and Edinburgh, published in Camera Work and in his own books, show the process at its most luminous. Coburn's vantage-point photographs, shot from rooftops and looking straight down, translate particularly well into gravure, where the deep blacks give the city streets a sense of abyss.
Strand's Photographs of Mexico portfolio (1940, second edition 1967) is the only major work produced in photogravure after World War I. Strand supervised the making and printing of the plates, using photogravure as a direct printing method from his original negatives rather than as a reproductive process. The portfolio demonstrates that photogravure could function as an original print medium, not just a way to reproduce photographs for publication.
Photogravure belongs to the intaglio family of printmaking, alongside etching, aquatint, engraving, and mezzotint. The aquatint grain used in photogravure is the same as in traditional aquatint etching. The difference is that in photogravure, the image is transferred photographically rather than drawn by hand. The process is also related to the daguerreotype, the first practical photographic process, which also used copper plates, though daguerreotypes produce a single unique image while photogravure plates can print editions.
Photogravures from Camera Work are held in the photography collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Emerson's photogravures are in the Royal Photographic Society collection at the V&A. Paul Strand's Mexico portfolio is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum.
When you look at a photogravure, hold it at an angle to the light. You will see the plate mark, the embossed rectangle where the copper plate pressed into the paper. The image itself will have a matte surface, unlike the glossy surface of a silver print. The blacks will appear as deep, velvety ink rather than metallic silver. For more on printmaking, read our entries on etching and aquatint, or explore our guide on how to read a painting for visual analysis skills.
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