Mass Image

The "Mass Image" situates the creation of the first photographically illustrated magazines within the social relations of the emerging popular culture of late Victorian London. It looks in detail at the illustrators, photographers, editors, publishers, wood engravers, and reproduction firms who commissioned, originated, and produced press images. It demonstrates that photomechanical reproduction produced an explosion of hybrid mixtures of the photograph and the hand. Using these fusions the illustrated press was able to envisage modern life on a much more intense scale than ever before.