Coffee-Table Books: Seriously?

Coffee-table books are linked to a progression of important technological innovations. This chapter sheds lights on key technological inventions from 1844 to the post-war period that brought coffee-table books into being. Beginning with an overview of various photographic methods that allowed the reproduction of images onto paper, the discussion moves to more specific examples. William Henry Fox Talbot utilised a particular method to produce the first instalment of The Pencil of Nature, published in 1844. Talbot’s photobook set a significant precedent for what was to become a new space for photography. The transference of photographs onto paper and hand-pasting photographs into books was time consuming. Eventually photomechanical processes were developed, and photobooks, which served as an important medium for social observation, by serious photographers, were produced using the photogravure printing process, which was labour intensive. When improvements in full-colour printing technology led to more cost-effective four-colour offset printing in the early 1960s, there was a shift from photobooks, aimed at a specialist market, to mass-produce photographically illustrated books. Thus, the coffee-table book in its material form came into being and found a ready market.