ABSTRACT
Many innovations in the fields of photography and printing led to the convergence of the photographic method with the techniques associated more traditionally with engraving. People engaged in a range of professional activities, including interpreters, were captured by the photographic gaze over a period of several decades during which the printing industry perfected the techniques for reproducing engravings along with typographical characters. Engraving procedures based on photos had given way to ever more efficacious methods of publishing photographs directly, so that both the photographic and non-photographic gaze converged in portrayals of the interpreter. It is therefore legitimate to ask whether the transition from engravings to photography contributed to the creation of the visual image of the interpreter in the twentieth century. A photographer could shoot in series, and the resulting images could portray the interpreters in a manner more in agreement with the complexity of their role, thus compensating for the thicker narratives provided by accompanying texts of engravings.
