Terence Wright certainly gets it right in the above quotation, but image-media has always been an integral part of our cultural heritage. The history of mankind is a history of communication in which duplication and reproduction of imagery has remained a principal contributor in the process of distributing knowledge. From hand impressions in cavernous subterranean habitats to hieroglyphic storytelling on frescoed walls and papyrus scrolls in Egypt, all used the mechanism of duplication. But the real game-changer came with the invention of the printing press. When Johannes Gutenberg developed an innovative printing process in the fifteenth century – by improving the existing screw woodblock press and incorporating movable metal type – he changed the face of this already ingenious craft. In just a few decades his invention spread widely over Europe. By the 1500s, these advanced presses were responsible for publishing over twenty million volumes. This became the era of mass communication, giving rise to a new branch of media: ‘the press’. As a consequence, the image became an integral part of a fervent method of communication. Artists such as Martin Schongauer and Albrecht Dürer (both German in origin) were the reputed forerunners in producing carved woodblock matrices of religious images in order to promote effective communication in a society that was still impoverished by illiteracy. The storyboard-type images, produced by the likes of Schongauer and Dürer, became the accepted form for conveying meaning visually. Unconcerned with concepts of ‘originality’ and ‘uniqueness’, the focus in the sixteenth century was on distribution at the largest scale possible, even if an artist such as Dürer could build a ‘universal’ reputation. There exists a painting by Michaelangelo that ‘copies’ Martin Schongauer’s The Temptation of Saint Anthony thus illustrating that there was little concern about adopting compositions that exquisitely excelled in illustrating a story. Marcantonio Raimondi meticulously copied Dürer’s woodcut series. The only ‘kafuffle’ was caused by Raimondi incorporating Dürer’s monogram. The controversy had nothing to do with forgery per se.

Historically, there is an observable trend for illustrations to reinforce a narrative text. Communication technologies evolved, and a critical turning point was the discovery and innovative practice of photography. This became the unremitting alternative to artistic illustrations and provoked a unique challenge to the publishing industry in the mid-nineteenth century.

An urgent need for photography to develop methods that would successfully transpose an image onto a printing matrix and mechanically produce multiples of ‘real’ mirror-type images arose during the Industrial Revolution. Experimentation by the pioneers Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, Hippolyte-Louis Fizeau and William Henry Fox Talbot lead to the Czech painter Karel Klic_’s more successful development of what is known today as the Talbot-Klic_ photogravure process. Light-sensitive dichromated gelatine combined with collophane dust particles – commonly used in the production of aquatint etching plates – was only one of a number of different methods being experimented with. Alphonse Poitevin was extremely successful experimenting with bichromate to facilitate the mass production of photographs.

In 1854, Charles Nègre, following Niépce, continued the ‘photoresist’ process with bitumen of Judea. His techniques were built upon by Louis Plambeck in the 1950s; pushing the development of dot matrix screens on photographs. This technique followed the earlier work of A J Berchtold in the 1860s, and is still current in contemporary mechanical printing, including offset and silkscreen processes.

The intention has always been to produce multiples of both text and images with the utmost efficiency and accuracy, as a means of proliferating knowledge. But, within this relentless race to continuously exploit new innovative technologies, the digital era has made old methods redundant; processes have been forgotten and lost.

Fortunately, there are revivalists. In the early 1980s American photographer, Jon Goodman, together with the Atelier of Saint-Prex in Switzerland, reanimated the Talbot-Klic_ method. Goodman, in collaboration with Swiss artist Pietro Sarto, successfully printed numerous photo-engravings continually ‘pushing’ the process by experimenting with a multitude of inks including colour etching à la poupée. The Atelier’s success in this renaissance led to the re-edition, by Aperture of famous photo-engraved works by Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Paul Strand and other early photographers involved with the twentieth-century publications Camera Notes and Camera Work.

Today, there is continued interest in photoengraved images. Olivier Lovey’s Puissance Foudre (2016) is testimony to this. Contemporary photographers also continue to record religious events, such as Alinka Echeverria’s The Road to Tepeyac.

The mission of all visual art forms, including their mechanical reproductions, binds these different creative disciplines into one multidisciplinary network dedicated to comprehensive global communication.