TREATISE ON TECHNICAL IMAGES AND THEIR
REPRODUCTIONS
JOSEPH BLAKE
TANIA COLETTE B
August 29 - September 12, 2026
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And they hadn’t even invented washing their hands yet. Can you imagine? Entering the press with several other men in a cold, dingey space, then stretching animal skin taught around fistfuls of horse hair to create a “drum,” rolling it in slick, sticky tar-black ink, then dropping the drums repeatedly on the iron letters until the transferred ink was thick enough to finally lay down the paper (which was, actually, a fairly new European import from China via North African trade). With inky hands, dried only with a rag, the printers would mount the paper onto a plate with pins to hold it in place, then fold the plates together before rolling the paper under the weighted press. An 18th-century print by the German artist Daniel Chodowiecki depicts an orderly version of this scene. In contrast, its 17th-century predecessor, The Intaglio Printers by Abraham Bosse, depicts the disorder for which printing studios were infamous. Still, in both, I imagine a moment when one man yelled over to Johannes in the corner, who was deep in focus as he set the metal type letters for the next printing, to help him with the lever. With the paper flattened under the press, one man would take one side of the lever, and the other would take the other side to crank it in a circle, pressing the plates down from above. Their fingers and forearms would strain, perhaps weakened by a diet of mostly bread, pottage, and ale. With ink beneath their fingernails and smudged into their clammy foreheads, the printers moved the plates out from under the press, removed the plate holding down the paper, and revealed crackling, tacky ink peeling from the letters onto the paper. Behold—a single page, finally done.
While the description above of a day in the printing studio may seem cumbersome compared to current modes of printing, this method of reproduction was still speedier than copying by hand, which was how most texts—or at least books—were produced in Europe before the advent of the Gutenberg Press in 1440, which was the first mechanical, moveable type printing press. From this invention, masses of people could access ideas, arguments, and processes that had previously been inaccessible or riddled with scribe-made errors. By increasing literacy rates, standardizing scientific diagrams through mechanical repetition, and widely disseminating observation-based discoveries and experimental results, the press’s invention would lead to the widespread adoption of knowledge creation methods that arose during the Scientific Revolution in Europe.
Two of the major developments during the Scientific Revolution were the integration of mathematics into observation and hypothesis formation, and the emphasis on collecting and interpreting new evidence for those theories. Texts from the middle of the 16th century like De humani corporis fabrica (On the Workings of the Human Body) by Andreas Vesalius and De Revolutionibus (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) by Nicolaus Copernicus required ample diagrams and images to present their evidence and convince readers of their findings. These authors used “technical images,” a term conceived by the Berlin-based researchers Horst Bredekamp, Vera Dünkel, and Birgit Schneider in their book The Technical Image: A History of Styles in Scientific Imagery. These images are not necessarily artistic (although many are illustrations), but originate from the fields of science, technology, and medicine. While some are “predominantly instrument-based or the result of imaging procedures,” the focus of this essay—and that of our two protagonist artists—is on illustrations depicting people doing things: sometimes science, sometimes invention, other times the correct ways to perform daily tasks. In the context of the 21st century, where we have unlimited access to how-to manuals in print or on the internet, how does the knowledge held in these images change as they are continually reproduced? What blind spots have we accepted as we’ve continued to reproduce and refer to those technical images born in the time of heightened information circulation? And finally, who do we trust as an authority on knowledge, no matter how practical or complex? How much discomfort can we tolerate in never knowing from where, or who, knowledge has emanated?
The lineage of each discovery is linked to a decision, which is linked to an environmental, anthropological, interpersonal moment that came before it. When not passed down through oral tradition, these ideas, actions, or proofs are passed down as images: graphs, charts, manuals, maps. It must be frustrating, borderline paralyzing, to attempt to create new images when historical connotations follow them around like a shadow cast at sunset. This may be the case for Tania Colette B. and Joseph Blake, and perhaps why they do things incorrectly. Both artists use source images that could not have been produced without the Scientific Revolution and could not have been standardized without the printing press. But they mess them up. They flay them, invert them, flip them, recontextualize them as anachronisms, remove key information, and even Frankenstein-stitch them back together. Perhaps these experiments are attempts to be agents in creating the future, since we can’t alter the contexts of the past.