The Liminality of Photogravure

Photogravure lives in a space between media—part mechanical, part craft.

This post dives into what makes that “in-between” so powerful and how it shapes the viewer’s emotional response.

Neither One Thing Nor the Other

Photogravure is not quite a photograph. It isn’t a traditional print either. It’s an image suspended between worlds—etched but photographic, reproducible but unique, deeply physical yet quietly ethereal.

In a world that favours clearly defined categories, photogravure resists classification. That resistance unsettles the eye just enough to slow us down, to ask: What am I looking at?  That pause, that slight disorientation, is part of the experience.

The Beauty of Betweenness

Liminality has always had power. It’s the moment before a threshold is crossed, the pause between inhale and exhale. Photogravure inhabits that kind of space. It blurs the boundaries between disciplines, eras, and even expectations. It isn't just retro. It isn’t novelty. It’s a process that quietly reclaims the tension between precision and imperfection.

Where modern photography is often immediate, and printmaking is often interpretive, photogravure lives in the poetic overlap.

Emotion in Ambiguity

Because photogravure straddles these edges, it creates emotional ambiguity. It feels familiar but strange, precise but soft, historical yet current. That emotional tension gives it depth. It bypasses the literal and goes somewhere more atmospheric, more internal.

The mind doesn’t quite settle. And that’s the point.

There’s something profoundly moving about that unsettled quality—an image that feels almost photographic, nearly printed, and somehow more than both. The viewer feels it, even if they can’t articulate why.

Craft as Passage

The process of making a photogravure mirrors this in-betweenness. It’s a collaboration between digital and analogue, science and touch, ink and light. The maker acts as translator between these worlds. It’s not a mechanical transfer; it’s a transformation. That process leaves traces. The final image carries the residue of its passage through different states of being.

It’s not about fidelity—it’s about feeling.