Nudes - Photogravures and Other Processes

This month, we are featuring a collection of work by Andre de Dienes produced by his Japanese publisher, Ondori-sha Publishing Co., in 1954. In addition, we have an extensive portfolio of work by Berlin photographer Ernst Schneider and Viennese photographer Otto Schmidt from 1908. These images are in excellent condition. Schmidt (1849-1920) operated one of the largest photographic art publishing houses in Vienna around 1900. The company offered these study sheets as templates for artists. A group of images by Roye, a controversial British photographer, whose photograph, ' Tomorrow's Crucifixion', depicting a nude model wearing a gas mask while pinned to a crucifix, was published in August 1938, but later became a noted photograph of its time. WARNING: IF YOU ARE OFFENDED BY THE NUDE BODY DO NOT VIEW THIS AUCTION! These are not photographs, but either photogravures, or other types of photo-mechanical processes. Photogravure is an intaglio printmaking or photo-mechanical process whereby a copper plate is grained (adding a pattern to the plate) and then coated with a light-sensitive gelatin tissue which had been exposed to a film positive, and then etched, resulting in a high quality intaglio plate that can reproduce detailed continuous tones of a photograph. Halftone is the reprographic technique that simulates continuous-tone imagery through the use of dots, varying either in size or in spacing, thus generating a gradient-like effect. Offset lithography is a printing process that involves transferring an image to an intermediate surface before printing it onto the final sheet.