PHOTOGRAVURE
Hand-pulled, gravure prints on rag paper.
My engagement with photogravure extends my ongoing investigation into photography as a practice of translation—one in which a photographic image is carried across materials and processes while retaining its dependence on light. Alpine Sunset and Martine Guillot, photographs of roses rendered through photogravure, move the image from a chemically or digitally exposed surface into the physical language of the printing press.
I am drawn to photogravure for the way it reconstitutes the photograph as an incised object. The image is transferred photographically onto a photopolymer-coated aluminum plate through a non-toxic, light-hardened process, where exposure establishes the undulating depth of the surface. When printed, the plate embosses itself into rag paper, producing a bordered impression that anchors the image physically as well as visually.
The process is deliberately slow and exacting. Each impression requires the plate to be hand-inked, wiped, and printed under pressure, introducing minute variations shaped by touch, judgment, and resistance. These contingencies situate the work between repetition and singularity, bridging photographic
seeing and the traditions of intaglio printmaking.
Within this framework, the roses function less as subjects than as sites of tonal articulation. Form emerges through gradation rather than contour, through pressure rather than exposure alone. Photogravure allows the photograph to exist outside the immediacy of capture, asserting instead a quieter, more enduring presence—one grounded in paper, ink, and the cumulative labor of the press.