Printing Photographs
As photography became more popular, metal plates were also used to print copies of photographs through a process called photoengraving.
This was done with a similar way to other offset metal plates, with a light-sensitive layer and a transparency of the image. Photoengraving also uses what is called a halftone process to create not just black and white, but delicate shades of grey. This process breaks images into small dots. Variations of gray tones are obtained by using different size dots. The most famous example of halftone are found in comic books and pop art, like that of Roy Lichtenstein.
Photoengravings were expensive to produce, so it was common use them repeatedly accross different publications, as we will see in these examples.
The State Teachers College at Towson often used photoengraving to show off their buildings and facilities. In 1927, this image was used in the Tower Light student newspaper to showcase the many different locations of the school since its founding in 1866. In 1941, this same printing block was used in the Au Revoir yearbook.
Photoengravings were also important for documenting people at the school – teachers, students, and administrators. After all, photographs create much more recognizable images than illustrations. In this example a photoengraving was used to reproduce a photograph of the State Teachers College baseball team for the 1941 yearbook, Au Reviour.
This image of State Teachers College graduates exiting Stephen's Hall first appeared in the 1941 yearbook, but was used again on the cover of the January 1943 Tower Light. Can you guess why they used the same image twice?