Intaglio Printing

The Vintage Look

My intaglio prints are a symbiosis of classic etching and photography. Each print on the copperplate paper is unique. The application of the copperplate oil colour, the rubbing of the etching plate with gauze and the printing on the etching press are all done by hand for each print, just as with copperplate engraving.

I started my first experiments in photopolymer gravure printing after reading an article in a trade magazine about the New York photographer Peter Liepke, which aroused my curiosity. He first produces platinum/palladium prints or gum prints from his New York photographs and then has a ‘Special Photogravure Edition’ printed on the etching press.

As a photographer, I had already been working exclusively digitally for many years at that time. However, I didn't want to go back to the analogue darkroom with all its photochemistry. The classic heliogravure, in which a photographic template is etched into the copper plate using acid, was also out of the question for me. So I looked for a way to combine my photography with photogravure. I came across the still very young technique of photopolymer gravure printing. It took a year and many, many attempts before I was able to print the first etching the way I wanted it. I learnt intaglio printing with copper plate, oil paint and etching press from the artist Sven Wohlgemuth in Hamburg.

The intaglio etching technique is a ‘non-toxic intaglio printmaking’: instead of etching directly into the copper plate with toxic acid as in heliogravure, a thin layer of photopolymer is squeegeed onto the plate by hand in a darkened room with the help of a water atomiser. This layer is light-sensitive and still uncured. The remaining moisture between the copper plate and the polymer layer is pressed out in the etching press and the plate is then dried overnight in the dark. The next day, the printing plate is ready for exposure with the motif. The motif, which was previously printed on a transparent film in the finest possible resolution using an inkjet printer and black pigment ink, is then burnt into the printing plate in direct contact under vacuum with UV light. As the polymer only hardens when exposed to UV light, the inkjet printer's black pigment ink has the advantage that it does not allow any light to pass through. This means that the polymer remains soft under even the finest dots of black pigment ink during exposure. Consequently, every tiny black splash on the film from the inkjet printer leads to a depression in the printing plate and all the transparent areas on the film that allow UV light to pass through harden the polymer layer. The image therefore consists of many tiny indentations into which the oil colour is rubbed. To expose the plate, I use a 300kg contact copier from the analogue days of the Theimer company from the 1980s. This device contains a 1000 watt UV lamp and a heavy vacuum frame.

Before the intaglio plate can be rubbed with the oil colour, the soft unexposed polymer must be removed from the plate. To do this, the exposed plate is briefly placed in a bowl of washing suds or washing soda. The alkaline soda dissolves the soft polymer out of the wells. After a short intermediate soaking, the polymer layer with the indentations is fixed and hardened in an acidic vinegar bath.

The subsequent print on paper is identical to the traditional copperplate engraving and the classic etching. The printing plate is rubbed with oil colour and wiped out by hand with gauze in many passes until the oil colour is only in the indentations. Once the plate is ready for printing, it is placed on the printing table of the etching press. A damp copperplate paper is carefully placed over it, the whole thing is covered with a printing felt and together the printing plate and copperplate paper are moved through the rollers of the etching press using a large flywheel. The pressure of the steel rollers, which weighs several tonnes, the moisture in the copper printing paper and the felt mat transfer the oil-based ink from the indentations in the printing plate to the paper. The print is complete. For each subsequent print, the printing plate is rubbed again with oil colour and wiped with gauze.

As the indentations are not etched into the copper plate with acid as with heliogravure, but are exposed in the photopolymer layer above it, the copper plate can be reused for other motifs after the edition has been printed. The photopolymer is removed from the copper plate by soaking it for a long time in a bath of washing suds.

I use a copperplate paper from Hahnemühle for the intaglio prints. The genuine handmade paper for artistic printing techniques is produced in individual sheets on a cylinder mould paper machine. It is acid-free and resistant to ageing. All etchings are original prints made by myself.