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PUBLISHER
The Museum of Modern Art, New York

BOOK FORMAT
Hardback, 8 x 10.5 in. / 308 pgs / 326 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Out of stock indefinitely

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2008 p. 89   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780870707216 TRADE
List Price: $60.00 CAD $79.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

TERRITORY
NA ONLY

EXHIBITION SCHEDULE

New York
The Museum of Modern Art, Fall 2008

THE FALL 2025 ARTBOOK | D.A.P. CATALOG

Artbook | D.A.P. Catalog Cover Link
Preview our FALL 2025 catalog, featuring more than 500 new books on art, photography, design, architecture, film, music and visual culture.
  

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK

The Printed Picture

By Richard Benson

The Printed Picture traces the changing technology of picture-making from the Renaissance to the present, focusing on the vital role of images in multiple copies. The book surveys printing techniques before the invention of photography; the photographic processes that began to appear in the early nineteenth century; the marriage of printing and photography; and the rapidly evolving digital inventions of our time. From woodblocks to chromolithographs, from engravings to bar codes, from daguerreotypes to contemporary color photographs, the book succinctly examines the full range of pictorial processes. Exploring how pictures look by describing how they are made, author Richard Benson reaches fascinating and original conclusions about what pictures can mean.
Although many of the techniques he discusses have been used to create exceptional works of art, Benson concentrates on the typical, everyday pictures that have played and continue to play such a prominent role in our lives. In conjunction with the publication of the book, an educational installation of this material will be presented in the photography galleries at The Museum of Modern Art, New York in the fall of 2008.
Presented as a series of one-page essays opposite the pictures they examine, the book retains the lively, engaging style of the informal lectures through which Benson developed his ideas over the course of 30 years at Yale University. Rooted in hands-on descriptions of practical techniques, The Printed Picture offers a rich and imaginative interpretation of the enormous cultural and social influence of multiple images.
Richard Benson is a MacArthur Fellow and the former Dean of the Yale School of Art. A photographer, printer and collector, he has devoted a considerable part of his career to research in photomechanical reproduction. As a printer Benson was instrumental in developing the technologies presently used in the industry to reproduce photographs in ink. He has taught many workshops and given many lectures on photography, printing and their associated technologies. He is the co-author of Lay This Laurel (Eakins Press) with Lincoln Kirstein and A Maritime Album (The Mariner's Museum of Newport News, Virginia) with John Szarkowski. His photographic work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, The Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven and many other institutions and private collections.
The Printed Picture

STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely.

FROM THE BOOK
BY RICHARD BENSON

"Photography and printing have become inextricably embedded in digital technology. The only chance we have of foreseeing the future is by understanding that human beings and all their actions are likewise intimately tangled with technology of all kinds. Wherever this show is going, the human being no longer travels there alone, but is instead accompanied by a host of rapidly changing technological offspring."
--Excerpted from The Printed Picture, Benson's seminal examination of the changing technology of picture-making, from the Renaissance to the present.

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