ABSTRACT
This chapter expands on the other face of photomechanical reproduction – mentioned, but not discussed at length in the previous chapter – that is equally important to the workings of print culture in the twentieth century and beyond. While the graded greys of half-tones conveyed the effects of photographs in print, simpler and cheaper photomechanical image processes captured and reproduced emphatic blacks and harsh contrasts with no intermediate tones. From line block process prints to Xeroxing techniques, any clearly differentiated mark could register as ‘camera-ready’ copy, allowing many shifting assemblages of images and text. At the close of the nineteenth century, process line block techniques were chosen by the new journal The Studio (founded 1893), which promoted the dramatic styles of pen-and-ink process line illustration as ‘the most vibrant of the contemporary arts’ (Beegan 2007: 58). In the 1960s photomechanical offset lithographic printing transformed the appearance of print and the organisation of labour in production. Although many people feared that this marked the end of print, both underground radical groups and capitalist bosses were strangely united in hastening this change (Marshall 1983).
