Pictorialism
Pictorialism was photography's first great campaign to be accepted as fine art. Flourishing from about 1885 to 1915, it held that a photograph should express the maker's emotion rather than record facts - so pictorialists softened focus, toned and brushed their prints, and worked laborious processes like gum bichromate and platinum so that each print was unique, closer to a drawing or etching than a mechanical record. The movement was unusually international: Henry Peach Robinson's writing and the Linked Ring in Britain, the Photo-Club de Paris and the Photo-Secession in New York, camera clubs from Vienna to Tokyo exchanging prints and journals. Its atmospheric, tonal look drew on Tonalist painting and Whistler. The tide turned after the Albright Gallery in Buffalo bought photographs for its collection in 1910; straight photography and modernism took over, though pictorialism lingered in places into the 1930s.
Defining characteristics
- Soft focus and diffused edges in place of documentary sharpness
- Hand-worked prints with visible brushwork and surface manipulation
- Warm tonal palettes - sepia, brown, deep blue - instead of neutral black and white
- Atmosphere, mood and suggestion valued over factual clarity
- Unique handcrafted prints (gum bichromate, platinum, bromoil, carbon)
- Compositions echoing painting and etching - Tonalist landscapes, old-master poses
Key figures
- Henry Peach Robinson (1830-1901) — Theorist whose 1869 book Pictorial Effect in Photography named the ideal
- Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936) — Naturalistic-photography advocate who framed the art-versus-document debate
- Robert Demachy (1859-1936) — French master of gum bichromate at the Photo-Club de Paris
- Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) — Made the movement international through Camera Work and his gallery at 291
- Edward Steichen (1879-1973) — Painter-photographer whose toned prints defined the style's look
Example works
- Fading Away — Henry Peach Robinson (1858)
- The Flatiron — Edward Steichen (1904)
- Blessed Art Thou Among Women — Gertrude Käsebier (1899)
Sources
- Pictorialism - Wikipedia encyclopedia
- Linked Ring - Wikipedia encyclopedia