Glasgow Print Studio - Harry Magee

glasgow print studio

harry magee

Selected Works - Harry Magee

5th - 27th June 2009
Glasgow Print Studio, Gallery III

Harry Magee joined Glasgow Print Studio in 1978 and worked mainly with photo-etching before converting to photopolymer gravure. He is best known for his atmospheric images of Glasgow skylines and Scottish landscapes with subtly toned, glowering skies. This exhibition includes a short Venice suite, his homage to Whistler and Craig Annan.

Click on any thumbnail below to view a larger version


The Piazza	Lagoon	Morning

Inferno	Glimmer of light	Athens of the North

Photogravure

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries photogravure on copper plates captivated the leading lights of “pictorial” photography - Alfred Stieglitz, Eduard Steichen, Alvin Langdon Coburn, and later the “straight” photographer Paul Strand, all valued the process for its rich velvety tones. Many of the images in the volumes of Camera Work, Stieglitz's seminal publication, were produced as photogravures, including a substantial body of plates made by Glasgow's J. Craig Annan.

In his own work Craig Annan pushed the medium towards pure printmaking, manipulating the copper plates as with an etching, a direction possibly influenced by his friend and etcher D. Y. Cameron. Together they travelled to Europe, Cameron making etching plates, Annan taking photographs which he subsequently printed as photogravures. It is the works of these past masters of the medium and photogravure's link with printmaking that drew Harry Magee to the process.

Photopolymer gravure

Today it is not necessary to work on copper plates since photopolymer plates give an equivalent result. The plates also have the added benefits of 'etching' in water, without hazardous chemicals, and inert residual waste material, making them environmentally friendly.