Chapter 2

Rotogravure is a form of early printing developed in Germany and was brought into United States in 1912. According to Encyclopedia Britannica: “system of printing based on the transfer of fluid ink from depressions in a printing plate to the paper.”  Rotogravure printing was used in newspapers to print photographs, art work, and advertisements. According to Professor Nordell: the advertisements and pictures in the newspaper were the most read pages at the time.  The excitement of printed photographs and news was very influential. This also increased advertisements and affected commerce.

 This type of printing greatly affected photojournalism, they were able to print photographs in better detail and grey color tones. Two newspapers used Rotogravure and it changed the newspaper industry, The New York Times and The New York Tribune. The Rotogravure assisted photojournalists to get their work widespread and faster. During WWI, the Sunday pictorial pages and the photojournalism was very influential. According to the Library of Congress’s article Newspaper Pictorials: World War I Rotogravures, 1914 to 1919: “These pictorials were important tools for promoting U.S. propaganda and influenced how readers viewed world events.”  The Civil War also was affected by photojournalism according to CBS news article Photography That Changed the Way We View War. Photojournalism became more mainstream once the Rotogravure came to newspapers.

Rotogravure compares to current digital photography minimally. Rotogravure printed pictures from a press with ink, which took time and was not immediate. Digital technology is instant, there is no printing press to generate the picture. Digital technology and the Rotogravure are simply not comparable when it comes to time frame of seeing the finished result. 

In the digital picture I took, I had the ability to autofocus my picture. The Rotogravure printing had no ability to do that.According to Professor Nordell, autofocus in cameras was a big advancement in technology in the mid eighty's. The one thing the Rotogravure and digital pictures have in common is the photographers eye and shaping the frame of the picture. Whether you use an old camera with Rotogravure printing or a cellphone camera, the constant is someone has to take the picture. 

New York Times Rotogravure picture

Image source: https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/the-new-york-times-rotogravure-picture-section-in-two-parts-section-5

 

Digital picture taken with a iPhone cell phone