I Call Them My Children - to Myself 1869

Winslow Homer made this wood engraving in the late nineteenth century, a period when reproductive prints like this one were widely circulated as illustrations in books and magazines. Look closely, and you’ll see it's made up of thousands of tiny lines, all carefully cut into a block of wood. This was painstaking work, demanding a high level of skill on the part of the engraver, and a division of labor, with a draughtsman providing the original image. Wood engraving was an essential medium in the rise of mass media. The image is not simply a means to an end, but imbued with social and cultural significance. The labor involved in creating such a detailed image, then reproducing it on a large scale, speaks to the rise of industrial capitalism and the changing nature of work in the late 1800s. This was a period of enormous social upheaval, and that anxiety is quietly evident even in a genre scene like this one. So, next time you encounter a print, take a moment to consider not only the image it presents, but also the labor, technology, and social context that made it possible.