The mass image : a social history of photomechanical reproduction in Victorian London / Gerry Beegan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Beegan, Gerry, 1953-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Magazine illustration--England--London--19th century.

Magazine illustration.

Magazine illustration--Social aspects--England--London.

City and town life in art.

Photoengraving--Halftone process.

Photoengraving.

Social aspects.

England.

England--London.

Physical Description:

xii, 302 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke [England] ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Summary:

Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936) identified the cultural shift that occurred at the end of the nineteenth century, when photomechanical techniques destabilized existing visual hierarchies and helped initiate the modern media. The Mass Image provides the first substantial account of the emergence of the photographically reproduced image as it traces the expansion of imagery that transformed the artistic and cultural landscape of the 1890s. This book looks in detail at the illustrators, photographers, editors, publishers, wood engravers and reproduction firms who commissioned, originated and produced images in popular illustrated magazines. The book demonstrates that photomechanical reproduction was central to an explosion of hybrid hand-drawn and photographic imagery. These visual fragments provided readers with a meaningful picture of the surfaces of everyday modernity.

Contents:

1 Introduction: Mass Reproduction and the Mass Audience 1

2 Imaging the City: London and the Media in the 1890s 31

3 Wood Engraving: Facsimile and Fragmentation 47

4 Process Reproduction and the Image Assembly Line 72

5 The Pictorial Magazine and the City of Leisure 99

6 The Illustration of the Everyday 131

7 The Photograph on the Page 160

8 Learning to Read the Halftone 186.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 210-290) and index.

ISBN:

0230553273

9780230553279

OCLC:

181072643

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description