Fotoreproductie van een prent naar een schilderij van een meisje in een veld met bloemen door Ludwig Knaus before 1874

This is a photomechanical reproduction of Ludwig Knaus' painting of a girl in a field of flowers. The reproduction would have involved a transfer of the image onto a printing plate, and the mechanical reproduction of the image, using ink and paper. The image before us testifies to a shift in artmaking, as new image technologies were being invented and deployed. Note the way in which the tonal range of the original painting, its colour, and the artist’s own facture have all been mediated and translated through the photographic process. The image is now flattened and uniform, absent of the artist’s own touch. The use of photomechanical reproduction suggests a culture that increasingly valued the dissemination of images to a broad public audience. The reproductive techniques allowed for an image to be mass produced, to be owned and consumed by all. The labour is now in the mechanization of image making, rather than in the hand of the artist.