Maggie Anderson of the Daily Iowan has a profile of Lothar Osterburg ^[2], a leading practitioner and teacher of the 19th century photographic process called photogravure.

Born in Germany, Osterburg ^[3] now lives and works in New York. His prints, which have been exhibited worldwide, have an ethereal quality unique to Osterburg’s process. As described on his Web site:

Osterburg makes photogravures of small, sculpted models of windmills, lighthouses, sailboats among others, staged in evocative settings. Built from memory of readily available materials, the models have a dreamlike quality which is enhanced by the placement of the camera within their world; the perspective is that of a person within the set, obscuring the actual size of the objects.

And how does Osterburg find the materials for his prints?

“Usually, I go Dumpster-diving,” he tells Anderson.

You can view a gallery of Osterburg’s work here ^[4].

And for more on photogravure, visit Mark Katzman’s Art of the Photogravure blog ^[5].

[tags]photogravure, Mark Katzman, Lothar Ostenburg[/tags]