The Mass Image A Social History of Photomechanical Reproduction in Victorian London

Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936) identified the cultural shift that occurred at the end of the nineteenth century, when photomechanical techniques destabilized existing visual hierarchies and helped initiate the modern media. The Mass Image provides the first substantial account of the emergence of the photographically reproduced image as it traces the expansion of imagery that transformed the artistic and cultural landscape of the 1890s. This book looks in detail at the illustrators, photographers, editors, publishers, wood engravers and reproduction firms who commissioned, originated and produced images in popular illustrated magazines. The book demonstrates that photomechanical reproduction was central to an explosion of hybrid hand-drawn and photographic imagery. These visual fragments provided readers with a meaningful picture of the surfaces of everyday modernity. Book jacket.

GERRY BEEGAN is Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual Arts, Rutgers University.