The Printed Picture

by Richard Benson

"The Printed Picture" traces the changing technology of picture-making from the Renaissance to the present, focusing on the vital role of images in multiple copies. The book surveys printing techniques before the invention of photography; the photographic processes that began to appear in the early nineteenth century; the marriage of printing and photography; and the rapidly evolving digital inventions of our time. From woodblocks to chromolithographs, from engravings to bar codes, from daguerreotypes to contemporary color photographs, the book succinctly examines the full range of pictorial processes. Exploring how pictures look by describing how they are made, author Richard Benson reaches fascinating and original conclusions about what pictures can mean.
Although many of the techniques he discusses have been used to create exceptional works of art, Benson concentrates on the typical, everyday pictures that have played and continue to play such a prominent role in our lives. In conjunction with the publication of the book, an educational installation of this material will be presented in the photography galleries at The Museum of Modern Art, New York in the fall of 2008.
Presented as a series of one-page essays opposite the pictures they examine, the book retains the lively, engaging style of the informal lectures through which Benson developed his ideas over the course of 30 years at Yale University. Rooted in hands-on descriptions of practical techniques, "The Printed Picture" offers a rich and imaginative interpretation of the enormous cultural and social influence of multiple images.
Richard Benson is a MacArthur Fellow and the former Dean of the Yale School of Art. A photographer, printer and collector, he has devoted a considerable part of his career to research in photomechanical reproduction. As a printer Benson was instrumental in developing the technologies presently used in the industry to reproduce photographs in ink. He has taught many workshops and given many lectures on photography, printing and their associated technologies. He is the co-author of "Lay This Laurel" (Eakins Press) with Lincoln Kirstein and "A Maritime Album" (The Mariner's Museum of Newport News, Virginia) with John Szarkowski. His photographic work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, The Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven and many other institutions and private collections.

Genres: Art, Photography, History, Reference, Nonfiction

308 pages, Hardcover

First published October 10, 2008

Reviews

[Nigel Ewan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wonder where this book has been my whole life. In sparkling prose, Richard Benson describes virtually every method man has used to reproduce images throughout history. This book should be essential reading for anyone engaged in printing or the graphic arts.

[Heather Shaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Humans have been interested in making more than one copy of an image since we dipped our hands in ochre and pressed them to the wall of a cave. “The demise of pictures in single copies,” writes Richard Benson, “is one of the first great innovations of printing…” Benson is a MacArthur Fellow, and was Dean of the Yale University School of Art from 1996 to 2006. The Printed Picture, a remarkably informative, accessible, and entertaining book, grew out of Benson’s lectures at Yale over the last thirty years, and the examines how pictures look by describing how they were made. An original picture’s meaning, says Benson, is most certainly derived from the intentions of its maker, but the meaning in a reproduction of that same picture can be extremely complicated, particularly in the modern age of photography and digital technology.

The Printed Picture begins with relief printing (printing from high parts, usually on wood) to intaglio (printing from low parts—engraving, etching, aquatint, lithography) to color printing, stencils, silk screening, the typewriter, silhouettes, photography, and ends with the digital process (which interestingly began with the old fashioned piano roll). All along the way, Benson enlightens the process, both technical and creative, with personal asides and surprising feats of nature, like, when can a tree become a camera? His discussions of the pros and cons of the different techniques as well as ways of solving problems are fascinating. For example, his notes on the calibration and measurement necessary to today’s artists and its danger in reducing, or utterly destroying the unexpected and unpredictable. The Printed Picture should be on anyone’s shelf who believes, as Benson does, that “pictures are as important as language, and that together they form the glue that holds society together.”

[Shila Iris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the concepts of art discussed in this book such as stencil letters, silk screen printing, etching, silhouettes, and weaving. Also, I found the book to be very relevant in its discussion of digital art processes and photo printing. This book is helpful for the artists who wants to grasp multiple concepts of mixed medium art and photography. The terminology of modern art seems to be important to understand insomuch as it incites creativity and possibility.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

"We must not confuse a photograph with the world from which it is made."

"All photography is fictional."

"I have little doubt that the woodburytype is the craziest photographic process of them all."

"All color is fugitive."

"Photography was invented because the printing presses of the world needed more data than the hand could provide."

[Beau Daignault · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saw this show in NYC, recently- amazing! A very comprehensive look at how images are printed, from cave painting to scanner photography.