Origin

The word comes from gravure printing. In postwar and late-twentieth-century magazine culture it named a way of looking that could live beside news, gossip, and celebrity. Video culture grew beside it rather than simply replacing it.

Cultural context

Gravure can describe a job, a photobook, or a television segment. Crossing from gravure into AV is treated as a career event, which is evidence that the categories are still meaningful even when individuals move.

Common misunderstandings

• Gravure is not simply soft AV.
• Not every magazine glamour image is gravure in the entertainment-industry sense.
• International usage sometimes uses gravure as a catch-all for Japanese pin-up, which blurs a more specific media history.